We Were Restless
by likeiloveyouforpussies
Summary: This was originally a one-shot story, but I've decided it's going to be a multi-chaptered series of vignettes to illustrate how I imagine Piper and Alex's relationship to have evolved, because that's the most interesting aspect for me. Thanks in advance and for bearing with me. Cheers.
1. Getting Started

Where the hell were they? Piper's mind flickered off for a moment, away from all the commotion it had been immersed into, to poke her on the side figuratively and question her judgment. She had no clue of where they had ended up or who all those people were. The most concrete thing she could recall was the bar closing and somebody -one of Alex's acquaintances- announcing that there was a party at so-and-so's house, and by that time, she was already blind drunk. So at the moment she hadn't really cared, and now… well, it was like her brain was telling her that she _should_ care, but the actual concern was unable to reach her.

The rest of the world appeared to be further away than ever and, unexpectedly, it wasn't an unpleasant sensation at all. Piper's universe had somehow condensed and adjusted itself to the inside of that unknown house, bending at its corners, snaking around the furniture, stretching out across the ceilings. Nothing but that instant and that place mattered to her, and it had to do with the innumerable drinks she had downed combined with the person in front of her.

They were standing in the center of what had once been a living room, and Alex was stomping her feet on the hardwood floor, one hand raised up high over their heads, holding a beer, and the other grasping Piper's waist. The raven-haired woman was so into the music that Piper could only conclude that she had provided it herself. With her head thrown back, crying out the lyrics, Alex seemed like the happiest and freest person alive, and Piper could only look at her in wonder and try to match her jumping and feet-stomping.

The following song was even more energetic, but instead of stepping back to give them more room to move, Alex slid her arm around Piper and pulled her closer. In fact, this was the closest she had been to the brunette, and it _was_ pretty close, since she could feel the cold stones in Alex's heavy necklace against the skin of her cleavage. Piper had to tilt her head up a little to look at the taller woman in the eye and, together with the smell of alcohol and very intoxicated human beings around them, she perceived Alex's scent, which was more than a layered array of makeup, cologne, and hair products. All she knew was that, if she could have made it into a drink, it would have inebriated her.

The brunette started singing again with her deep voice, her clear eyes wide open and fixed on Piper, as if the lyrics were meant for her. However, that didn't make a lot of sense, since the song's narrator was explaining that she was nervous around some sexy person and didn't know what to do, which didn't sound like Alex at all. Honestly, it sounded more like her, and maybe that explained the goofy little smile on the other woman's lips. Not knowing what to do with her hands, Piper allowed them to be gently redirected by Alex to rest on her bare shoulders. Noting the softness of the woman's skin, she then locked her fingers behind Alex's head, sinking her thumbs into the black strands of hair with random blue streaks. Both of Alex's arms were now surrounding her waist -she could feel the beer bottle pressing against the small of her back-, and their hips were swaying from side to side in unison, following the rhythm, which was now picking up. With the chorus, the song took a turn towards the feverish and, although the music was quite loud, Piper could no longer hear the singer's voice, only Alex's.

She would've liked to believe that they were just bouncing around and dancing to a fun song, but alcohol had effectively handicapped her brain and it could not presently activate its bullshit mode, and so she couldn't pretend to not know what had been going on all night, or pretend to be blind to Alex's present actions. How could they be so calculated and yet, at the same time, appear to be so natural? It would've been mind-boggling to her if there had been a mind to boggle, but Piper's mind was on an alcoholic vacation, and it felt too amazing not to indulge in it.

Without thinking, she trailed her hands down Alex's shoulders, focusing on the large rose and the tiny naked woman tattooed on her right arm.

"Hey," the brunette said, bringing Piper's attention back to her face. "You okay?"

"Yes." Piper didn't know where to look, her eyes jumping from Alex's eyes to her bright red lips. "Yes, of course."

"I don't know… It kinda looks like you want something." Alex's open hand started moving up and down her back, which was distracting, to say the least.

The brunette chuckled knowingly. Her loud and throaty laughter had caught Piper off guard when they'd first met back at the bar. During those few hours, she had grown accustomed to the sound - moreover, she found that she enjoyed it very much. It seemed honest, not at all like the polite, girlish giggles of Piper's friends. However, this present chuckle of hers was different; this was how villains in movies and cartoons laughed when they were concocting their evil plans.

"No, I…" Piper closed her eyes for a second, not wanting to lose her train of thought. It was tough, fighting Alex's little touches. "What do I want?"

Alex raised her eyebrows for a moment and then let out a string of laughter, while Piper looked on, wide-eyed and starting to feel impatient.

"I can only assume…" Alex said, bringing a hand up to Piper's tumbled, dirty-blonde hair, her hairpin lost hours ago. "But assumptions are boring."

Yes, they were. Moreover, assumptions were inconsequential and useless, and she was finding out now, on the craziest night of her life. She had never felt so drawn to anybody, and it had happened instantly, like the purest form of chemistry.

Piper nodded slowly, her drunken bravado enabling her to smile at the woman without breaking eye contact. Alex smiled back, her magnetic self-confidence shining through. Her hips started swaying slightly to the rhythm of the song, perhaps subconsciously, perhaps deliberately, and they were applying an intermittent and delicious pressure on Piper's lower abdomen. However fantastic the feeling, it was also strangely unsatisfying, incomplete, like an unfulfilled promise, and Piper wanted more. That was the single, existent truth for her right then: she wanted more of Alex. It was better to go ahead and admit it.

The dark-haired woman smiled cheekily at Piper's pleading gaze. She took one last, eternal look at her before bowing her head and pressing her lips against Piper's. It was enough to stop time, the music, and the blonde's anxiety, but the contact was too brief, and it left her reeling for more.

"See? I knew that you wanted something." The words were unapologetically sardonic, but they had been pronounced in such a weirdly sweet tone that Piper wasn't offended at all, even if the joke was on her.

However, she still felt short-changed, while the brunette was clearly enjoying her stunned reaction to the kiss too much. Frustrated and slightly irked, Piper was at the point of protesting when she felt those warm lips against her own once more. She opened her mouth to the other woman's, finally allowed to share her hunger, even though Piper could feel her smiling between kisses, which was equally irritating and alluring.

Her lips tasted of another woman's lipstick. That was a fact, and that was a new thing for her. She wasn't even surprised to find out that that didn't trouble her at all. The only problem was that she still wanted more - and _that _was the infuriating thing.

"Let's get out of here." Alex said, at last.

She didn't even care enough to ask where. Piper would've accepted the hand that Alex was offering and walked with her anywhere. She was barely aware of leaving the living room, of being led up the wooden staircase and into some room. These were actual things that were happening to her, dream-like as they felt. Alex reached out around her, shut the door, and kept her hand there. She then moved closer, until the fabrics of their clothes grazed.

One floor above the ruckus, the muffled music sounded eerie. Compared with how loud and clear it sounded before, now it reached them with an underwater-like quality which was close to silence. With no other distraction apart from a soft vibration of the floorboards, her senses concentrated wholly on Alex and, all at once, that woman was more intoxicating than anything she had drunk that night.

Piper felt a warm hand on her cheek and a hot breath on her neck. She leaned forward instinctively, dying to feel those lips on her skin, and Alex pushed her back, pinning her against the door with the entire length of her body. It paralyzed her for a moment, and all she could do was gasp. Profiting from her temporary paralysis, Alex kissed her way back to Piper's mouth and bit her lower lip, caressing it with her tongue while it still was between her teeth.

Her clothes felt like the thickest barrier in the world and as heavy as fur coats stuck to her scalding skin. If her lips and tongue hadn't been reclaimed by Alex's mouth at that point, she would've thanked the brunette for pulling down the loose shoulder of her dress. She thought she had never been more anxious to get out of her clothes.

"Come here," Alex whispered, moving away from the door.

There was a bed in the room, with a big rectangle of yellowy light projected by the window. It was their only source of illumination, but it was sufficient. Alex's skin was all but phosphorescent, gleaming in the grey darkness, and Piper was a mere moth to its light. They stumbled towards the bed, with the brunette walking backwards, which didn't mean that she was being pushed - on the contrary,_ she_ was the one taking Piper with _her_. During the way, two expert hands snaked under Piper's dress and moved upwards, discarding the garment as soon as it slid off the blonde's head.

Their landing on the bed was rough but calculated, at least for Alex, who somehow managed to end up on top. She administered a maddening string of kisses and nibbles down Piper's neck and chest before sitting up, straddling Piper's hips. The blonde watched her unbuckle her belt, undo her dress, and throw both items over her shoulder. She was still wearing more clothes than Piper though, and that was intolerable.

Perhaps sharing that same thought, Alex then gestured with her index finger for her to come closer. Piper sat up immediately, holding onto Alex's thighs, and the woman's lips met her halfway, not aggressively, but in a surprisingly tender way. Blindly, her hands moved to the hem of Alex's white tank top and, when she was about to pull it off and they had to break the kiss, the other woman's devilish smirk made her stop. She felt strangely self-conscious all of a sudden. Was it so obvious that she didn't know what she was doing? Was Alex only too aware of it?

"I-I…" she stuttered, recoiling slightly from the other woman's body.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Alex asked, her voice no louder than a whisper. Otherwise unaffected by Piper's retreat, the brunette kept on stroking her hair, her back, the skin under the straps of her bra.

"I've never…" Piper sighed. "I've never been with a woman before."

"So what?"

"So… I don't know." Piper sighed and threw her head back. "So maybe it shows?"

"Uh-huh, I see…" Alex took off her slick, black glasses for the first time that night and tapped them on her own chin for a moment, pretending to ponder the question. "Well, you _do_ know that's there's just one way to solve your problem."

Without waiting to see how Piper reacted to her remark, Alex stretched out her arm to place her glasses gingerly on the bedside table. Then, she returned that blue gaze of hers to Piper and took off her own tank top and bra in a couple of swift moves. Piper lowered her eyes from Alex's face to Alex's generous breasts and felt lost in a sea of skin.

"Listen, it's okay," whispered the brunette, cupping her face. She kissed Piper lightly on the lips before starting an irregular trail of damp kisses up her neck. Upon reaching her ear, Alex started sucking and nibbling on her earlobe. "Everything's okay. I'm gonna show you. It's okay, hon."

She must've muttered more reassuring token-like words, but Piper was unable to pay attention to their meaning. They were like drops of candle wax that Alex was dripping on her skin. The deftly administered kisses and the level hum of Alex's voice were enough to make her dizzy. She wasn't even aware that her bra was gone until she felt Alex's warm breath around her nipples, and when they hugged, the shock of having Alex's breasts against hers, feeling their naked skin together, made the air catch in her throat. She thought she had never experienced anything quite as erotic in her entire life.

Piper lied back on the bed very slowly, with the feeling that she had floated down from a great height, but it was only Alex guiding her, Alex giving her things she didn't know she wanted.

Her boots dropped on the floor with two dull thuds, and then she felt Alex's hands navigating up and down her thighs. That sensation was enough to switch off her stupid brain and allow her body to be carried away by the current of desire. Through half-closed eyelids she watched the grinning brunette manipulate her limbs like some kind of all-knowing entity which Piper couldn't and didn't want to fight. Her tights slid down from her legs easily, as if they were willing to comply with what was going on.

And then Alex was on top of her, her movements creating a slight current that made goose bumps bloom all over her highly sensitive skin. The brunette combed back several strands of Piper's hair and continued trailing her fingers down her chest, and then lower still, grazing her belly button. She toyed with the rubber band of her panties, tugging it upwards so that Piper became all too conscious of how this was affecting her body, of what her body demanded, because she actually felt how very wet she was.

Having proven her point, so to speak, Alex relieved her of her damp underwear. A sigh escaped from Piper's lips with the relief of being absolutely free, and when they kissed again, she would've crashed her whole body -and not just her mouth- into Alex if she'd been able, to show her how she wanted her everywhere.

The woman with the Cheshire cat grin gave her one last kiss before embarking on a tortuous southbound journey.

"Stop teasing. Please? Stop teasing," she said, with a voice so dense with desire that it sounded alien to her, like she was the one who was submerged underwater now. Alex's answering chuckle, however, told her that her voice was completely audible.

The brunette propped herself on her elbows and kissed down the insides of her thighs. Piper shut her eyes tightly, wondering if there was something else she could do to get Alex where she wanted her. Her hands wandered across the bed, looking for something to hold on to, and then searched for Alex, reaching down. She lifted her hips, hoping to obtain some direct contact, but the merciless brunette had started biting softly around her outer lips and the sensitive area where her legs met her ass.

"Oh my… God," Piper groaned, unsuccessfully trying to push Alex's head into her. There was no trace of pretense left in her now, no need for politeness. That woman had stripped her of everything, both physically and metaphorically, and all that Piper could hope for now, and all that she believed she deserved, was her release.

Alex started kissing her lips, sucking on them very lightly, slowly making her way deeper between Piper's legs. Whenever Piper raised her hips, Alex stopped and pulled away, which was so exasperating that it was going to drive her insane, she was sure. Her legs had started to tremble, tense as they were, as tense as her arched back, but she dared not move any more, now that the brunette had started to explore her with her tongue. She stroked her slowly, painfully, circling her clit but not touching it.

"Alex," she hissed, simply. "Alex."

"I like it when you say my name," murmured the deep voice.

Perhaps as a reward for that, or to end her desperation, the brunette closed her mouth around her clit. Even if Alex couldn't see her, with her face buried between her legs, Piper frowned and nodded emphatically. Yes, yes, this was what she wanted. Maybe she even said it out loud. Alex sucked on her faster now, moaning against her clit, alternating it with brushes from her skillful tongue, creating a delicious rhythm Piper would want to etch in her memory forever.

Piper knew that she was close, dangling from a precipice and starting to lose her grip. If only Alex didn't stop, if she kept going… But Alex was not one to settle. She started working her even faster, which surprised Piper and made her cry out. She fumbled around the sheets until Alex guessed what she wanted and found her hand. With their fingers interlocked tightly, Piper finally let go of the edge of the precipice and welcomed the fall.

She shook and shook and covered her eyes with her free hand. Maybe she was whimpering, maybe she was screaming, she no longer knew, and Alex only stopped when it became apparent that there was nothing left in her. She was absolutely spent, empty, strewn across the bed like a broken doll.

"Hey you," Alex said, forcing her to open her eyes.

When she did, she saw that the brunette was now lying next to her. Her hair was messy, her smiling lips were shiny and moist. Piper would have expected her to appear proud of what she had just done, but strangely, in her eyes and face she could only read happiness. This woman was a mystery to her and every signal seemed contradictory, but their fingers were still entwined, and Piper didn't feel the slightest need to let go. That was something, wasn't it?

Rolling onto her side, Piper chased the warmth of Alex's body. She kissed the woman's cool, humid lips, tasting herself, until her lips were warm and she only tasted Alex.

"Don't even think of falling asleep," warned the throaty voice. "You're not done here. We're just getting started."


	2. Penumbra

The blonde opened her eyes to the penumbra of the room. Her sleep had been sound and dreamless, and now she felt fully rested, even if it was the middle of the night. Feeling ready for anything, she glanced down at the wrinkled sheet, which was doing an irregular effort of covering her up, and then to her left, where the dark-haired woman was. Alex was lying on her side, facing her, but completely asleep. For a moment, Piper couldn't believe her own eyes. They had been "together" for a couple of months, going out either by themselves or with Alex's friends almost every evening, fucking on any and every available surface, lounging lazily in the sunny kitchen, exploring tiny bookstores and rundown record shops, watching more movies than she could remember. Except when they were at work, they had hardly been apart, and yet, she could not recall a single occasion when she had woken up first. Her eyes had always collided with Alex's ever-present, blue gaze, effortlessly dissecting her to the bone, spying on her at her weakest.

This Alex, however, was so different that she looked like another person. She was breathing deeply, her lips parted, and every muscle in her face completely relaxed. A single strand of raven hair had freed itself from behind her ear and was now framing her cheek, but Piper didn't dare touch it, lest she broke the spell, so perfect that she was almost willing to believe that it had been conceived by some benevolent deity.

With her hands bunched up under her own cheek, Piper tried to be as still as Alex, even trying to tone down her breathing, because she was scared that even the slightest change in the atmosphere would wake her. Was she just a light sleeper? Was it in her nature to be an early bird? Or was she such a control freak that it was impossible for her to appear vulnerable around her? Piper's hyperactive mind had inevitably been drawing her own conclusions about Alex, because even if the woman clearly wanted to retain part of her mysterious appeal, no one could keep their walls up every single second of the day, particularly if one was spending almost every waking hour with another person. Alex, who was always sardonic but never cruel, who was probably the raddest person she had ever met but brought her coffee to bed and made her funny-shaped pancakes which they called "O Keeffe's" or "Rorschach tests" when they were a bit too abstract to identify, because Alex always said they looked like pussies.

Even on the first night they'd met _and _slept together, several things had indeed taken her by surprise; she had noticed the brunette's unexpected tenderness during what she had considered a one-night stand, but at the moment she hadn't known whether the brunette was just being considerate because it was Piper's first time with a woman. It was also true that, lying in Alex's arms and feeling more spent than a dead battery, she had seen something in the woman's blue eyes which she had identified as joy. Later, when it became more than a one-night stand because it kept happening, it was all college parties, drunken dancing, and running back home to fuck with abandon. Piper's vision had been so clouded with the discovery of her attraction for Alex that she became blind to everything else. In her mind, they were fuck-buddies, or whatever it was called, but nothing more.

Recently, however, the myriad of discrepancies populating their "relationship" had started to register. They were already "together"; Alex didn't need to "conquer" her anymore, but she kept adding those jarring little touches anyway. Of course they didn't _have_ to spend so much time together, certainly not fully clothed, but that was what they were doing, and they did not _have _to go for walks hand in hand, or talk endlessly about this or that book - Piper knew that she shouldn't even _care_ about the other woman's opinions, her interpretations, but their discussions sometimes reached the wee hours of the morning. Certainly Alex didn't need to empty a drawer and a shelf for her stuff, or assign her a shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms in case she didn't want to walk around the house stark naked. Their habits had changed, gradually, naturally, however temporary Piper believed all this was, and maybe that explained why the woman beside her was still fast asleep.

Looking at Alex without her knowledge - that was no little thing. That was a novelty, and Piper intended to enjoy every second of it. She watched the woman's face come alive little by little, her eyebrows twitch, her lips purse, her throat swallow. For an instant, Piper wondered if she should shut her eyes and pretend to be asleep, let Alex have her security, maintain the status quo for a little longer. But, honestly, she didn't want to. She wanted to find out what would happen, so she kept her eyes open and, when Alex opened hers, she smiled.

"Hi," Piper whispered.

The brunette seemed confused, with a cute little frown slightly wrinkling her brow, and then, upon seeing Piper, came the recognition, and the familiar glint in her eye returned.

"Hi." She cleared her throat, rubbed her eyes, and returned the stray strand of black hair behind her ear.

"Did you sleep well?" Piper asked, unable to hold back the shrill excitement from her voice.

"Yeah… I guess someone tired me out a bit, huh?" Her voice sounded hoarser, clouded with slumber.

"Really? I didn't think that was actually possible."

"Me neither." Alex raised one eyebrow and reached out to cup her face. "But you're becoming such a good student."

"Oh, is that what I am? At least I hope I'm getting good marks."

"I don't know… Let's find out, come here."

Obediently, Piper scooted closer to her, and Alex made her lie on her back, commanding her to stay still. Her careful hands started caressing down Piper's neck and shoulders, stopping at her clavicle.

"Hmmm, I think we've got something here." Using her thumb, Alex gently stroked a small area of skin. "Yeah, I'd say that's a good mark."

"Ouch!" Piper cried, feeling a sharp sting. "What is that? Is that…? Is that a bite?"

"A scratch, I think," Alex laughed. "Relax, this is _not_ a zombie movie. God, aren't you dramatic?"

"I'm not."

"Yeah you are. You're such a drama queen sometimes."

Wide-eyed, Piper opened her mouth, pretending to be deeply offended - and not having to fake it too much, either. Sometimes Alex's jokes hit so close to home that they bruised her pride, and she knew that Alex was aware of it. Was this some kind of retaliation for having spied on her while she slept?

She hurled herself on top of the brunette, trying to pin her down on the bed, but Alex was like a very restless Houdini, escaping from Piper's every attempt to grab her.

"Are you actually trying to attack me? Now you see why I have to sleep with one eye open?" Alex seized Piper's wrists, eliminating her support, making her fall flat on top of her, her face in the crook of Alex's neck.

"Why do you do that, really, sleep with one eye open?"

"So I can do this." Alex winked at her, and then started laughing like she had come up with the most hilarious joke ever.

"No, come on," Piper tried to shake her wrists free, but Alex didn't oblige. "Be serious for a second."

"For a whole second? Jeez… Okay."

"Okay?"

"Sure, fine."

Alex then released her and raised her hands like someone who was about to get arrested. Her cat-like gaze was as playful as ever, but she allowed Piper to reposition herself on top of her, so they could look each other in the eye. In that moment, Piper became aware of two facts at the same time. Firstly, that they were about to have "the talk", or some version of "the talk". Secondly, that her thigh was resting between Alex's legs, and that the brunette was still wet from their earlier activities. Evidently, she wouldn't be capable of attending both matters at the same time, so she would have to make a choice.

Piper sighed and brushed her parted lips over Alex's, not quite kissing her, but not doing something entirely innocent either. Realizing this, like she realized everything, Alex giggled huskily.

"Wow, we made it. We were _literally_ serious for one second."

"Shut up," Piper whined, wondering if the teasing would ever stop. "I'm such an open book to you, am I?"

"Yeah… not just an open book. You're, like, a book for ages three to five."

It wasn't even slightly funny. She scrambled out of the bed, swatting Alex's hands away, and started walking towards the door.

"Fuck you. _Now_ I'm being serious."

"Pipes, come on, don't be like that. I was just kidding! Well, who knew you had a temper?"

The voice in the back of her mind told her that Alex was just trying to make her stay by being all kinds of outrageous, but Piper couldn't help herself. She turned around to see Alex kneeling on the bed, squinting at her, not because she was angry, but because she wasn't wearing her glasses.

"Really, go fuck yourself," Piper said, pointing at her with her index finger.

"Alright. Might as well." Without breaking eye contact, Alex plopped down on the bed and spread out her legs. Her hands began stroking her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, and then met between her legs, parting her lips, which Piper already knew were moist.

She wanted to curse the brunette, but part of her feared what she would do if she told her again to go fuck herself. Another part of her couldn't move and couldn't stop staring. When two of Alex's fingers disappeared from view, Piper's feet started taking her back to the bed, like a sleepwalker. She crawled towards the brunette, placed her hands on the woman's bent knees, and spread her legs further, so she could see.

But seeing was not enough. She seized Alex's hand, brought it up to her mouth, and sucked the wetness off her fingers.

"This isn't yours," she whispered with authority.

"No?" Alex asked, raising her eyebrows.

"No, not anymore. This is mine."

Piper scooped her long, blonde hair to the side and dipped her head between Alex's legs, her sex opening up easily to the flat of her tongue. It had surprised her, at first, how much she liked the taste of Alex, how much she wished to stay down there for hours and hours. Now, for the first time, she was thinking about Alex in terms of property, and even though she knew that this thing between them had an expiration date, she was on a mission to reclaim what she considered hers, what was hers for the moment.


	3. White Wine

Choosing the stool closest to the center of the bar, the dark-haired woman sat down and nodded at the pub owner, who returned the greeting. She tapped on the shiny, wooden surface with her fingernails and glanced around the place until she spotted Piper. The blonde was zigzagging her way around the tables with a round tray under her arm and a genuine smile on her lips. This was something Alex did on occasion, going by Piper's workplace to pick her up, so she'd had plenty of time to observe the woman's behavior. There was always a nice word or two for every client, and she even stopped to chat for a minute if they were sitting by themselves. Most people liked her because she could be kind without being bothersome, and that was why she always got the biggest tips, despite being rather disastrous at the actual waiting of the tables.

It was easy to mock her for liking the job so much -and Alex did mock her, more often than not-, but it was equally true that Piper knew how to extract joy from almost everything she did, something that Alex herself was not always capable of doing. Lately she had been thinking about that fundamental difference between them: she had worked hard to mold the world around her, a world which had been unsympathetic to her for years, while Piper's strategy was quite the opposite - adapting herself to whichever world happened to surround her. That required special abilities and an unusual kind of strength, one which wasn't noticeable at first, one which had barely made it through Alex's trained eyesight. Luckily, though, she had not made the mistake of underestimating Piper.

A few minutes later, the blonde woman noticed Alex's presence at the bar, and flashed the sweetest of smiles in her direction. Alex swore internally, but maintained her perfectly serene front while Piper approached her, sashaying her hips and wearing that cute little uniform: a white polo shirt, a black mini-skirt, and a Guinness bottle-green apron.

"Hi, my name's Piper, and I'll be your waitress tonight," said the blonde, with pretend politeness. "What can I get you?"

"How about… you get yourself out of that apron and come with me right now? Let's start with that."

"That's… something I could probably do, yes. Just give me a minute."

The blonde vanished as quickly as she had appeared, and Alex felt a familiar pang of anticipation in the mouth of her stomach. Before, she had only felt it on counted occasions: maybe before meeting her father, embarrassing as it was to even think about that experience; certainly after discovering what her exhilarating profession had to offer. She wasn't an impressionable person; she didn't spook or shock easily, but that irritating little pang presented itself more often now, ever since Piper had wriggled her little ass into her life.

Alex sighed, adjusted her glasses. How she wished it was just her ass, because she'd had plenty of that before and it had never overwhelmed her. This was different; that girlwas different.

And now it had come to this. They both knew what was going on, that this was the last night they were going to spend together in a long time, if not ever (who knew where Piper would be when she returned - Alex had zero expectations). She had work to do, starting with Indonesia, and there was nothing to be done about it. In fact, she'd been putting it off for too long, tiptoeing around her boss, which was more like tightrope walking - she was smart enough to know that she didn't want another visit. The bottom line was that she had to leave and couldn't keep on avoiding it. And that, as they say, was that.

She had never lied about her job -it was Piper who hadn't believed her at first-, and once the cat was out of the bag, they'd never sat down to talk about all the other stuff either, their stuff, whatever it was they were doing. There had been a couple of half-hearted attempts, one of which had started when Piper believed she wanted to have a serious discussion, although she hadn't, she'd just wanted to feel like she was in control of the situation, if only for a little while. And Alex had capitulated because she had understood Piper's need to prove that she wasn't overwhelmed. Those attempts, however, had been unsuccessful because neither had wanted to get into it, not really. But hey, full disclosure was severely overrated, wasn't it? Why go through all the trouble, when you could make do with just-about-enough disclosure? Why bother, when they knew they had been living with a countdown hovering over their heads for some time now?

The blonde returned, wearing a purple hoodie over her uniform, stating that she was ready. They exited the pub, Alex holding the door open for the girl, enjoying Piper's beaming smile and look when she had to squeeze between the doorframe and Alex's body.

"So, what do you wanna do?" Alex asked, shoving her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket.

Piper slid her hand inside Alex's right pocket, interlocking their fingers. "I'd rather turn in, if you don't mind. I still have to pack?"

Ooh, packing. Fun… Her own suitcase was already by the door, ready for the next day, because she was so much better than her at getting her shit together, she had jokingly told Piper. With a wry smile on her lips, Alex stared straight ahead, tracing the palm of Piper's hand with her thumb. She remembered the bottle of expensive, white wine she had left cooling in the fridge -a remnant of some party-, and felt better.

However easily she could read Piper most of the time, that woman still managed to puzzle her. She either looked at her like a schoolgirl with a crush, or like she was about to eat the most appetizing of desserts. Being at the receiving end of both was great, yet, at the same time, she seemed to be completely accepting of the present situation, that Alex had to go. Not that she could do anything to change it… and maybe that was it, maybe that was the only reason Piper needed to accept something. Once more, Alex felt that she had been right not to underestimate her.

The prey to her trap, Piper had been too easy to lure. Alex knew that the blonde had found her interesting right off the bat. That was what usually happened, particularly with girls -Alex's area of expertise-, girls who had been raised by their families under a glass dome, both for protection and for a preservation of the species of sorts. They were equally repelled and attracted by Alex's outrageousness, her loudness, her recklessness, and wanted to try out what real freedom felt like. If, in order to obtain that, one had to move around a bunch of heroin, well, that wasn't so terrible, was it?

And Piper hadn't even wrinkled her nose at her, not for a second. She had been all wide-eyed desire from the very beginning, glancing back at her from over her shoulder, ordering a stupid drink and staying at the bar even after the waiter had blown off her request for a job and her joke of a résumé. The blonde had done it all but wear a big sign that said "I don't know why but I want to know you better", like an Ani DiFranco song on legs. It had been a great source of amusement for Alex, how very into her this little, straight girl from Connecticut was. And Alex had given her precisely what she'd wanted, knowing exactly what to do to her to make her feel special. All those girls believed that their first time with a woman was a very big deal, and that was how they needed to be treated, like they themselves were a very big deal. Besides, they were already used to people making a fuss over them, so they kind of expected it.

Not that she hadn't enjoyed -and didn't still enjoy- sleeping with Piper. Who wouldn't? She was all kinds of hot, fun, and very… dedicated, very thorough - a fast learner. However, that wasn't all. Soon enough, something had changed, although Alex had never been able to pinpoint the exact moment. Perhaps there hadn't _been_ an exact moment, and they had simply started talking, over dinner, over drinks, and under the cocoon created by the sheets. Perhaps it had to do with too much rubbing skin against skin and spending too much time together, and Piper borrowing her clothes and running her fingers along the spines of her books, leaving her prints on all of her stuff. Perhaps it was that Piper could always make her laugh, sometimes on purpose, sometimes with her excessive innocence or her surprising malice, and sometimes because of her aggravating need to destroy every Dusty Springfield song in every single karaoke bar they encountered.

Somehow, Piper had made herself different in Alex's eyes, and time went by and Alex never got to the part of coaxing her into working for her. They were just living together, without a script, pouring sugar and milk into each other's coffee, and being so fucking mundane that seeing it in any other person would've made Alex suppress a wave of nausea. But this was _her_ life. This was _her _person. This was someone she could relax with and sleep next to, without necessarily having to be this or that Alex.

They arrived to her place, an old factory which had been thoroughly and successfully revamped into an impressive loft. It was luxurious, conforming exactly to her tastes and wildest dreams, but functional as well -how she loathed those houses furnished with stuff you weren't supposed to touch, armchairs you weren't supposed to sit on-, and somewhere she could always come back to. Even if she wasn't the settling down type, it had been great putting it together, it was nice owning it, and it had been nice sharing it with Piper too.

Alex took off her leather jacket, hung it by the door, and glanced down at her suitcase, which seemed to be waiting for her like an obedient dog. Following the blonde's footsteps into the open space that was the kitchen, she extracted the bottle of white wine from the pistachio-colored refrigerator.

"Want some of this?"

"I'm going to jump in the shower first, okay?" Piper gave her a small peck on the corner of the mouth and disappeared into the bathroom.

The brunette placed the unopened bottle on the granite countertop and sat on one of the stools which surrounded the large kitchen island. With the tip of her index finger, she absentmindedly traced a capital "A" on the humid, cold glass. She didn't feel like drinking it anymore, and couldn't quite figure out the reason why. Maybe due to the fact that uncorking a bottle of something or other had to do with a celebration, a new beginning. They had downed bottle after bottle of champagne all night at her housewarming party, she recalled, and that had felt right, while this didn't.

Leaving the bottle behind, Alex went to the main bedroom. She thought it was a good idea to change into more comfortable clothes –sweatpants and a loose t-shirt-, before Piper started opening and closing drawers.

"You're not having wine?" Piper asked when she came back from the shower. She was wearing a grey top and some cute shorts they had bought together - although Alex couldn't remember the actual store, just the dressing room.

As soon as she'd heard muffled sound of the blow dryer, Alex had gone for a snack and a glass of water, since she knew that this was going to be one of Piper's eternal bathroom stays. She had also started playing some soothing soul and funky music, which always made her feel warm inside. Leaning back on the headboard and cradling a book against her knee, Alex felt as ready as she would ever be to watch the gradual process of Piper leaving.

"No, didn't feel like it," she answered, burying her nose back in the book.

She felt the blonde's eyes on her during several seconds, and then sensed her moving around the room, busying herself with the task of fishing out her clothes and laying them down on every able surface. This was going to be fine. If there was something she believed in, it was her own capacity for self-preservation.

When she lifted her eyes again from the page, she saw that the blonde was standing at the foot of the bed, facing the wall, nonchalantly folding her clothes, but shaking her head and body to the music. For a couple of seconds, Alex couldn't avoid staring at Piper's ass in movement, and then she noticed that the blonde was looking at her over her shoulder, completely aware of the effect she was causing. How could she be so goofy and sexy at the same time, and make her smile no matter what?

"Get over here," she commanded.

But clearly, Piper wanted to take it slow, make her suffer. Still swaying to the music, she peeled off her shirt, teasingly ignoring both Alex's gesture and mouthed request for her to come closer. She swung around one of the bedposts, placed one knee on the bed, clearly in no rush to comply. If she wanted to play, well… Alex was fucking game.

"Will you miss me?" Piper asked, using her innocent voice, which of course was all part of the show.

It was probably the worst thing to ask, in the worst possible way. She was being sweet, seductive, leaning on the bedpost and flexing her leg. They hadn't even addressed this properly, and now it had to be done jokingly, mixing it up with the sex. And of course she was going to miss _that_.

"Yes," Alex admitted, immediately. She shook her head, staring at the curve of Piper's back, not even wanting to play pretend with this matter. "Too much."

That was the naked truth, even if Piper was probably too involved in her little striptease act to notice. She wasn't going to miss her "a lot"; she was going to miss her "too much", because she wished it could be less, as simple as that. And then, the solution presented itself in her mind, clear as day and simple as fuck. Why the hell not?

"Come with me."

The blonde froze for a second, peering at her from behind the bedpost. "What?"

Piper seemed genuinely surprised, not because the idea was dumb, but surely because she hadn't expected such a proposition. And Alex understood; their relationship up until that moment had been one thing, and this would maybe turn it into another. It was enough to stop her seductive dance.

"Come to Bali," Alex said, grabbing the remote and stopping the music. "Come with me, I mean it, I'll buy you a plane ticket."

Why should the Bali thing be a problem? Her job had nothing to do with them. It had never interfered until that moment, and it didn't have to. Why did it have to split them up? Why did she have to give up something good, end their holiday before even taking the trip?

Her mind was no longer in a rut. It went back to being practical, and quick, and sharp, and clear, with an aim. Of course she didn't have to lose Piper. Why renounce to anything? Why should _she _renounce to anything? She didn't. She could have both, Piper and Bali, and now she felt completely relaxed, she realized, taking off her glasses, because once she knew what she wanted, all she needed to do was reach out and take it.

"Are you serious?" Piper asked, scooting closer. It was more a request for Alex to be serious than a question.

The brunette's smile grew, fueled by the girl's tribulation. She met her at the center of the bed, looking her straight in the eye.

"Yes," Alex answered, raising her eyebrows and bowing her head to deliver a kiss between Piper's breasts. She felt more confident than ever.

This was the Piper she could read effortlessly, as much as it had always bugged the blonde to admit it. Alex could almost see the wheels turning inside her head, wondering if it was one of her little games, but what if it wasn't… that kind of thing. Again, the brunette completely understood her, because it wasn't like they had ever been serious about this "relationship" for more than a second - only sometimes in bed, of all places, under the covers, hugging and kissing like there was no tomorrow, staring into the gleam between each other's eyelids. And still, those were actions, not words.

"Come with me. Quit your job…" Alex snaked her hands around the blonde's waist, directing her to straddle her hips. "And come with me."

Still somewhat stunned by her proposal, Piper kept more or less still, letting Alex caress her and kiss her neck. But if there was something Alex was good at, she could tell when a deal was done, and Piper's stuttered rebuttal was but a smoke screen. In her mind, she was already picturing the idea.

"I-I'd have to give notice."

"You're a fucking waitress! You don't need to give notice." She laughed, and started kissing Piper's cheek. It was going to happen. It was going to happen and it was going to be fucking incredible.

"Will I get in trouble?" Piper asked, not even bothering with hypotheticals now.

"God, I hope so," she answered, chuckling at her own pun, the possibilities before them innumerable.

She kissed down the girl's clavicle, making her gasp. It was one of her weak spots. Then, she caressed her way down to Piper's breast.

"You know what I mean."

Of course she did. But Piper's voice was already dense with desire, and all she wanted was to be reassured so that she could let go completely, to know that she was "allowed" to say yes.

"You don't have to do anything. You're just there to keep me company." Alex toyed with the strap of Piper's bra, caressing her shoulder. "Alright?"

When their noses rubbed together, she realized that their closeness was becoming too intoxicating to dance around any longer. Their lips found each other, easily, as they always did now, whether it was broad daylight or the darkest night. Piper was more than ready; she was telling her with every fiber of her being, with the pressing urgency of her kisses. But she wasn't going to get it that easy, oh no, she wasn't.

So this was the game; if she wanted it, she would have to give her a concrete answer, which Alex needed, despite herself.

"Come on, babe, I want you to come. And I want you to come."

To help Piper speak up and to test the waters, Alex slid an exploratory hand inside the girl's shorts. The tips of her fingers got coated with Piper's wetness at once, and she felt fucking amazing. The girl's sharp intake of breath and her surprised face told Alex everything she needed to know. She thought she was getting what she so badly wanted, but not yet, not yet. First, Alex required her answer, if she had to tease it out of Piper.

"Yes? Is that a yes?"

"Yes," Piper said, almost breathing out the word into her mouth. "Yes."

Of course it was a fucking yes. And she would be saying that word a lot more. She dove into Piper's lips again, her tongue finding the other woman's tongue, stifling every emerging moan.

She finished getting rid of Piper's bra and let Piper take off her shirt, which was like a dead weight on her body anyway. Her own heat, as well as Piper's heat against her skin, was getting tough to handle. Alex hooked her thumbs under the elastic of Piper's shorts and discarded them, then made her lie down on the bed while she took off her own pants and underwear.

She lied down on top of Piper, and the girl's legs surrounded her waist, using her feet to shove Alex against her. The delicious pressure made the brunette groan, but it wasn't close to enough. She slid an arm between their bodies and dipped her fingers within Piper's wet folds, using her own thigh to push her hand. The blonde tried to communicate, in her own way, that this was what she wanted by murmuring an array of incoherencies, holding a bunch of Alex's dark hair tightly within her closed fist.

Unconsciously but inevitably, Alex's hips started creating a spiral-shaped rhythm, one which made Piper dig her fingers into the small of her back. She herself was grinding hard against the blonde's thigh, and felt just about ready to let go, but no, not before Piper.

"Look at me," she whispered, lifting her head from the curve of Piper's neck, where she had been kissing and biting her. "Look at me. Together?"

The blonde nodded, muttered her name.

"It's okay, it's okay, baby. Just tell me. Tell me when."

"Okay… Yes… Oh my God. Oh my God, Alex, I'm coming. I'm coming."

Piper threw her head back and closed her eyes, and only then did Alex feel free to increase the rhythm of her hips and fingers, which was the final push both of them needed. It felt like an electric current was splitting her in half, her voice coming out in ragged cries, wounded, returning from a battle fought in the depths of her body.

"Oh my God," Piper repeated. Or was it just an echo, the remnants of their pleasure still bouncing off the walls?

She cupped the blonde's face and kissed her lightly, almost lazily, at least a dozen times, until her body appeared to recover. Again, she started to feel the immediateness of what was happening, the stunning vertigo. This didn't have to end, it just didn't, and so she allowed the floodgates to open, the relief flooding her like an internal cascade.

"Pipes?"

"Yeah?"

"Come with me."

"I am, I already told you." There was a pause. "And… I just did, remember? Barely a minute ago? Um, which one… which one do you mean?"

Alex giggled, placed a kiss on Piper's cheek. Poor thing. "I mean the_other_ one. Get up, come with me?"

The blonde frowned, but complied, accepting Alex's extended hand. They walked into the kitchen, and Alex grabbed the bottle of white wine she had abandoned earlier.

"I thought you didn't feel like it," Piper said.

"Now I do. And look, it's still cold." She dragged the side of the bottle down Piper's naked back, making the girl yelp and almost jump out of her skin.

"Jesus! Don't do that!"

Laughing, Alex opened a drawer, extracted a corkscrew, and started working at the bottle. "Fetch me a couple of glasses, please, my dear?"

There was just something in Piper that incited her to be more playful than usual, and she loved that side of her own personality. And Piper enjoyed it too, even if she didn't want to admit it. This playing house of theirs had been a lot of fun, but it was now time to give this thing a test drive around the world.

She filled up their glasses generously and raised hers. "To the fucking amazing adventure that's out there, waiting for us."

Piper nodded, smiling like an excited little girl. They knocked their glasses together, and drank. "Hmm, wow, this very good."

"Yeah, mine wasn't so bad. Let me try yours."

Pausing a moment to enjoy Piper's puzzled face, glancing from the glass to the bottle, Alex then lunged into the girl's mouth, sucking the wine's taste off her lips and tongue.

"You were right, it's delicious."

"Aren't you going to let me try yours?" Piper asked, surprising her with her bravado. And she wasn't even drunk yet.

Alex nodded, theatrically handing her the glass. She definitely had her complete attention. The blonde took one look at the glass and then proceeded to down all its contents quickly. Since it was too much for her mouth to contain, tiny, transparent rivulets of wine started running down her chin and neck. They traced the shape of her breasts and collected in the form of dew-like droplets on her nipples. The brunette raised her eyebrows, springing into action immediately, unimpaired by her own surprise.

She bent down to drag her tongue along Piper's tasty skin, drawing circles around her wet nipples. She then tried to kneel before the other woman, who was holding onto the granite counter for support, but Piper seemed to want none of it. She pushed Alex against the kitchen island and seized the half-full bottle.

The brunette kept still, but only because the expectation was delicious and she wanted to know where this was going. Suddenly, she barked a laugh when she felt the icy wine pour from the bottle and splash against her skin.


	4. Tiny Engraved Butterflies

The wooden promenade snaked its way around the hotel complex, casually, inadvertently gorgeous, just a step away from the silvery waters. Given that the sun was about to set, someone had thoughtfully lit a string of yellow candles along the path, set at a meter's distance from one another, and they were so inviting that Piper felt like a girl in a fairytale, tempted by an unknown but attractive world. Just as she was turning around to see if Alex had finished talking on the phone, the dark-haired woman emerged from their room, which was more like their own little, independent villa.

Padding across their terrace towards Piper, Alex was the image of serenity: wet-haired and barefoot, carelessly carrying her leather sandals over her shoulder. She was wearing a pair of khaki shorts which had seen better days, a black tank top, and a bracelet made out of blue pebbles which Piper had bought her as a thank you gift at the first beach they'd gone to - which had been completely naïve, if not idiotic, she mused, considering where Alex had brought her, possibly one of the best hotels in the world. She knew that, despite being loaded, Alex was far from being a snob, and that, when she traveled, she also liked to feel the rush of everyday life, the dirt under her feet, and taste the real food that people ate, not "Some fucked up Westernized version," as the brunette herself had put it. But this, the choice of this hotel, this manufactured piece of heaven with a king-sized bed, a terrace with palm trees, and a private swimming pool, was a present for Piper, a very deliberately flamboyant one. It was a way to wow her, to draw her in a little bit further, and Piper was entirely aware of it, a consenting, willing prey.

The tall brunette surrounded her shoulders with one arm and pulled her close, delivering a small kiss to her temple. Then, she gently nudged her along the wooden pathway, as they walked with the ocean to their left.

"Where are we going?"

"Listen, Pipes, you need to stop asking about 'when' and 'where' so much, forget those words, they're not important - at least not here. And don't tell me you're still wearing that fucking watch!" Alex promptly snatched her wrist, unclasped the offensive item, and shoved it in her pocket. "Less thinking."

"Okay, but I only asked because it feels like you're actually taking me somewhere."

"Fine, you got me." The brunette sighed, smiled quizzically for a moment, and then pointed at a scrawny-looking tree which was on one of the corners of the promenade, cutting into the pink and violet horizon, so close to the water that its roots seemed to be holding onto the edge for dear life.

Following Alex's index finger, she realized that the enchanting yellow candles led to a spot next to the tree, where someone had set a table and two chairs.

"Oh my God! Is that for us? It's so beautiful!" Piper squealed. She encircled Alex's waist and embraced her, feeling brunette's grinning lips against her shoulder.

"Come on," Alex jerked her head towards the table. "You gotta be hungry."

In fact, her stomach felt like a black hole, but she hadn't really noticed until she saw the array of dishes set on the table, from boiled rice, to vegetables, to what she guessed was chicken and duck. They could've ordered room service, of course, but Piper hadn't even remembered about food, busy as she had been with Alex's sun-kissed body.

And this place, this place was absorbing. The glossy clouds were gradually turning purple, eating up the baby pink of the sky and making the light projected by the candles more apparent. It gave Alex's skin a lovely golden tint, and Piper could only stare at the woman like another breathtaking part of the scenery. But the brunette was busily opening a bottle of some autochthonous wine and pouring it into their glasses.

Piper took a sip of the rose-colored beverage, its tropical, almost flowery aroma surprising her in a good way, and then started attacking the food on the plates with zest, unable to control the void in her stomach any longer. Alex mocked her, of course, but it didn't mean anything - that was just her way. The brunette usually followed a pattern: first teasing her and then being affectionate, as if one could not subsist without the other, as if one gesture fed off the other. As expected, Piper felt a warm hand stroking her back under her still-damp, blonde hair, and she surrendered to its touch, leaning against its owner.

Alex moved her hand to her hip, slipped her fingers into the loops of Piper's pants and pulled her off her chair, making her sit on her lap. The brunette's arms surrounded her, one hand perilously approaching the underside of her breast, the other holding the glass of wine, her chin resting on Piper's shoulder. The moment was so extremely close to being perfect that Piper's mind managed to stop, not even thinking about how much she was enjoying this and just enjoying it - a sensorial process, not a mental one.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light in the sky, a blast of color that startled the blonde and made her recoil, almost causing their chair to topple backwards. Alex tightened her grip on her waist and pulled her to her feet, just as more explosions started. They looked like bursting, colorful stars. Fireworks, Piper realized, breathing out. Just fireworks.

"Are you responsible for this too?" she asked, turning to look at Alex.

The brunette shook her head, still laughing at Piper's semi-heart attack. "Must be the wedding. Wanna go take a look?"

"But we're not invited."

"So what? Fuck'em! Let's go crash their stupid party."

Later, Piper learned that the newlyweds and part of their family were staying at the hotel's most luxurious area, called "the penthouse", which Alex had tried to book, but it had proved impossible. That was the real origin of her pet peeve against the wedding. So, following Alex's logic, crashing some strangers' celebration was a perfectly viable plan of action. Retribution-wise, it tilted the universe back in her favor, like it should be.

They ran back to their little villa, quickly changed into a couple of dresses, and sped down the promenade, hand in hand, towards the wedding party. The ceremony as such had been held at the hotel's own chapel, which was almost completely glass-plated, so white and shiny that it appeared to be carved into a gigantic diamond. They popped inside for a moment to take a peek, Alex plucking a white flower from one of the bouquets and placing it in Piper's hair, behind her ear.

Following a group of guests, they walked around the chapel and found where the real celebration was about to take place. It was a large, poolside terrace which looked like it had been carved into the mountain and, at the same time, it was only a set of steps away from the hotel's private beach and the Indian Ocean. As the people stopped oohing and aahing at the last batch of fireworks, a bunch of waiters arrived to set up the buffet and start serving the drinks.

They glanced at each other, wordlessly agreeing on what to do. However, whereas Piper was on edge, expecting to be asked who the hell she was at any moment, Alex seemed practically at home. She navigated the crowd expertly, without avoiding anybody, saying "Hi" to everyone she made direct eye contact with, accompanying the greeting with an emphatic elevation of her eyebrows. She had transformed herself into the estranged cousin or childhood friend who everybody was ashamed to admit they couldn't remember, and so they returned her smile and even asked her how she'd been.

And that was how, slowly but surely, they made their way to where the bar had been set up. Piper's eyes were immediately drawn to the colorful cocktails in pear-shaped glasses, complete with twisted straws, miniature umbrellas, and all the usual addenda. The brunette called them "fruity", but then came up with a dare: they had to drink at least one of each, and Piper agreed, even though they were as varied as the colors of the rainbow.

Three cocktails later, she couldn't even tell the difference. Giggling into Alex's neck, she wasn't able to remember if she'd already had a red one, or had it been an orange one? She inserted one of the tiny umbrellas into Alex's cleavage, clapping when it didn't fall or get lost inside the woman's dress. It seemed a moment as good as any to compliment her on her breasts, and even touch them… But Alex grabbed her hands, intercepting her advances.

"Hold up, Pipes. I love it when you're all touchy-feely, don't get me wrong, but we don't want to get kicked out, do we?"

She frowned and stuck her lower lip at the brunette. But she was being so subtle! Offended by Alex's rejection, she pulled out the little umbrella from the woman's cleavage, closed it indignantly, and turned to leave, expecting to be stopped, or at least followed.

However, she suddenly found herself in the middle of the improvised dance floor, surrounded by strangers and no Alex. The celebration was at the point when people's shoes were starting to come off, ties were loosening, and some of them were even tied around their owner's foreheads. Piper knew that everybody was drunk enough to no longer care who she was, but she was starting to get noticed in an "attractive blonde girl all alone" kind of way, and didn't like it one bit. Pushing away several sweaty, potential suitors, she stumbled her way towards the pool, where she heard a familiar, loud string of laughter.

The brunette was sitting on the edge of the pool with her legs submerged in the blue water, her burgundy dress pulled up to mid-thigh, and a beer in her hand. There was a group of young people surrounding her, both outside and inside the pool, listening to some crazy story she was probably making up along the way - she was very good at that. Piper approached them, with her hands bunched up into fists.

"There you are!" Alex cried out, stretching her arm in her direction but remaining seated. "Everyone, this is Piper."

It became so obvious that the dark-haired woman hadn't even lost a second of her time looking for her that the blonde felt shaken by a burning rage. "Where the fuck were you? I can't believe you just left me there!"

"I'm not your mom, Pipes. I mean, you can do whatever, you know? If you wanna go, then cool, go."

"Yeah, but…" she shook her head, squeezed between Alex and some redhead who clearly didn't wish to be separated from the brunette.

"Were you scared? I'm sorry, babe. C'mere." Alex combed back her hair, kissed her tenderly. Then, she helped her with her dress, folding it up to her knees so that Piper could also sink her legs in the cool water.

Despite herself and her stillborn anger, Piper felt safe now, snuggled against the woman, their feet playing under the water. She always felt safe with Alex somehow, maybe because the brunette always appeared so fearless.

A beer bottle materialized in her hand, and she drank it in one breath, immediately requesting another. Her drunkenness had almost vanished with the scare, and that was unacceptable. She felt a very urgent need to be drunk again and, as Alex never failed to remind her, it didn't take much to get her there.

It turned out that Alex had found the "outsider" group of the wedding. Of course she had. Every single celebration, be it a wedding or a christening, has a young-ish group of guests who do not fit in neatly with the rest, who are friends of friends, neighbors, or work colleagues, and these people are less ashamed of getting roaring drunk and doing stupid things. And sometimes, they also carry some drugs, which was this group's case.

Introducing herself as the eccentric, gay cousin who was living in Europe, Alex had seamlessly integrated herself with the group, and having Piper with her only added credibility to her story. Not that they cared too much; they already pretty much loved the brunette, so when the suggestion of drugs came up, both of them were at once included. Piper expected weed, but one of the guys was carrying ecstasy in his wallet, which he unceremoniously extracted, dumping the light-blue pills with tiny engraved butterflies onto the palm of his hand.

Alex snatched two, placed one on her own tongue, and kissed Piper, pushing the little pill against Piper's tongue, so that she could swallow it. The blonde then took the other pill from Alex's hand and did the same, ignoring the random cheers directed at them. Kissing Alex had always had the magical effect of making the rest of the world disappear and making it all about the here and now. Alex had the gift of living in the moment, but it was usually harder for Piper - except when she was kissing the brunette. Everything became easy then.

Piper became so engrossed in the other woman's lips that she hardly noticed that their position was now horizontal, that she was now on top of Alex. The brunette chuckled, surrounded her with her arms, and made them roll over. Feeling a microsecond of emptiness in the mouth of her stomach, Piper realized that they had rolled off the edge of the pool and were now in midair. And then, water, water everywhere.

Hundreds of bubbles tickled her arms as she sunk to the bottom and, when she was rushed to the surface, her hair stuck to her face like a mass of dense seaweed. She found that she couldn't stop laughing, even if the thick, wet curtain prevented her from breathing. Fortunately, Alex was right there to help her, directing her to the edge of the pool.

Those who weren't already in the pool started leaping into it, and soon the water boiled with activity. There were bodies everywhere, both on the surface and underwater, their belongings floating away from them as if they had finally earned their freedom. But Piper felt protected, sandwiched between the brunette and the wall of the pool.

Besides, something quite wonderful was starting to happen. A shiny hue seemed to cover everything; lights were brighter, the water became vibrant, sloshing to and fro at half-speed. And Alex… Alex was like an idol of ancient times sculpted in marble, almost towering over her. She took off her glasses, which were covered in water, like everything else, and secured them on top her head. Even those simple gestures were fascinating to Piper. And when the brunette bent down to kiss her, her senses seemed to explode, shattering into infinity.

She remembered Alex giving her a piggyback ride around the multicolored water of the pool, dodging the other crazy, inebriated people.

She remembered running down the steps to the beach, where the hotel staff had planted some torches. The sparkly fire seemed to jump at her, and so she ran into the sea to be safe.

She remembered sitting with Alex at the shore, laughing and pointing at the people skipping and diving into the water.

She remembered stumbling back to their place, their dresses torn and soiled with wet sand from the beach, their sandals lost hours ago.

She remembered standing in the shower, hands raised over her head, the warm water falling all over her like a comforting cascade, and remembered Alex stepping in after her, embracing her, kissing her softly.

She remembered falling naked on the cool whiteness of the bed, hugging Alex with her arms and legs. She remembered dragging her nails down her skin, and biting around her belly button, and kissing her neck while straddling each other's thighs, and feeling their sexes connect, and thinking that she was going insane and actually accepting it.

And then she remembered her brain shutting off slowly, lying next to Alex in a tangle of limbs, but still not able to close her eyes. She remembered Alex looking at her too, eyes shiny with tears. Frowning, she reached out to touch the woman's humid eyelids. Was she crying, too? She didn't know.

At some point, she must've fallen asleep, because Alex awoke her by whispering in her ear the most surprisingly sexy words Piper thought she'd ever heard: "Wanna see a volcano?"


	5. Strombolian

Her right eye stung, probably because a grain of sand had got in during their earlier romp, and it was keeping her awake. She rubbed at it furiously with her fist, knowing that she probably shouldn't do that, but feeling relief when the tears started to bloom. Much better. Trying to keep her eyes shut, Alex shifted her position in the sleeping bag and scooted closer to Piper's body. She surrounded the blonde with one arm and dipped her face under her chin, seeking the warmth emanating from the woman's skin.

Alex was sure that there were versions of Piper she hadn't smelled or tasted yet, but some she had. There was one that smelled of coconut milk shampoo, with a clean, cozy taste, like home. There was the early morning Piper, with the fresh taste of toothpaste and chlorinated water from the swimming pool. There was the late night Piper, with the metallic taste of alcohol on her tongue. There was the one that had stayed too long in the sun and tasted like a fever. This one now had sand on her brow, and was a bit salty and sticky from the ocean, which Alex considered was the scent and taste of adventure.

Something else which was preventing her from sleeping was the weirdly powerful knowledge of being the only two people on the miniature island. It should've made her feel smaller, more insignificant, and it did, but it somehow empowered her as well, like the world was theirs because they had inherited it. Camping on a beach, with one tiny tent, one sleeping bag, one backpack, and a portable freezer against the supreme presence of Nature with a capital "N"… it was impressive enough to make her heart swell. This was so much more than a pretty backdrop; this Nature grabbed you and made you kneel down before raining heavily over you, screaming "Here I am".

She buried her face deeper between Piper's bikini-clad breasts, accidentally waking her up. The blonde groaned and reached down to sink her fingers in her dark hair.

"Al?" she asked, in an adorably dozy way.

"Yeah." Alex kissed her way up to Piper's mouth. "Sorry."

"Oh, it's fine…" Piper's croaky voice trailed off. "I was just so tired."

"You did great today, for someone with a hangover the size of the Titanic."

Piper's fatigued laughter came out inaudible, just several intakes of breath and a vibration of the ribs. "I did better than you."

"Yeah you did… You wanna go back to sleep?"

"No, no, I'm okay." Piper rubbed her eyes and blinked exaggeratedly. "Why don't we go outside? It must be so beautiful now."

They kicked their way out of the sleeping bag, which Alex opened up completely so that it could be used as a blanket. Then, she fetched her glasses, zipped open the tent and stepped out, followed by Piper. It was like being born again, in a way. She threw the sleeping bag over their naked shoulders and looked up at the immeasurable, polka-dotted sky.

As they slumped on the patch of sand in front of their little tent, Alex raised her arm to point at the brightest star, Antares. The entire constellation of Scorpius seemed to be greeting them with its long tail. Piper just nodded, just as enthralled and wide-eyed.

Before them, across the water, was the island of Anak Krakatau, born out of an explosion that cracked open the earth with the supposedly loudest sound ever heard in modern history. Alex had wished to see an active volcano for ages, and felt immensely happy to be there, sharing the experience with Piper.

The mountain started sputtering bright red sparks, which floated downwards like fading embers and clawed their way down the mountain's slopes. She had read that those were called Strombolian eruptions, which were relatively low-level and went out at irregular intervals, but nothing could have prepared her for the actual sight of flying lava. Piper was gasping, covering her mouth with one hand and fumbling around the sleeping bag with the other until she found Alex's. With their fingers entwined, they watched the dumbfounding spectacle of the Earth vomiting its contents through its cracks, as if they were sitting in front of the world's most extreme fireplace.

"I can't believe I'm here." Piper whispered, finally.

It felt like no one had spoken for hours.

As the volcano simmered down, akin to firewood turning into embers, they relaxed. Piper snuggled against her, eyes closed tightly. Alex believed she glimpsed the sparkle of tears between her eyelids, and maybe it was due to the floating ashes, maybe due to the sight they'd witnessed, and maybe it was something else entirely. Raking Piper's hair with her fingers and kissing the top of her head every once in a while, the brunette absorbed the sight of the radiant, ruby-colored cracks until they weren't visible anymore and the omnipresent column of smoke resurfaced - that was how the island looked most of the time, like the largest chimney ever.

"Hey," she whispered, placing her lips on the girl's earlobe.

"Hmm?"

"You're falling asleep. C'mon, let's get you back in the tent."

Poor thing. They had spent the last couple of days travelling around Indonesian islands and that same morning they'd gone both snorkeling and trekking. No wonder she was falling asleep in her arms. Alex was tired too, but only her body. Her mind was like a live flame asking for things to burn. She had never been happier or more scared in her life, and she didn't know if the fact that her dreams were all coming true was just live bait for darker times to come. Piper was like a new craving hadn't known she possessed, one she would unfortunately keep on needing, and that worried her, because the more she tried to take a step back, the faster she always ran back to the girl.

They entered the tent and set down the sleeping bag, with Alex helping Piper get in. Just as she was closing its zipper, the blonde grasped her hand.

"Aren't you getting in?"

Nodding, Alex crawled into the sleeping bag and finished closing it up. As soon as she did, the blonde hugged her, rubbing her face against her neck. What did this say about her own capacity for being in control? Cursing inwardly, she sighed and took off her glasses.

She had held back earlier that day, during their extensive trekking excursion, and it hadn't ended well. She had challenged Piper to jump from the tallest fucking waterfall she had ever seen, and Alex hadn't jumped with her. It hadn't been a malignant joke; she hadn't even meant to trick her. Piper had wanted to hold her hand, but she'd blurted out an excuse (that she needed to hold her nose or some bullshit of the sort) and had let the blonde jump alone. Alex still didn't know how she'd been taken over by that panic, but her limbs had really frozen, her eyes fixed on the thundering waters.

Moreover, seeing Piper as a mere speck of yellow floating in the water below had calmed her. She had felt the relief wash over her whole body, and only then she'd been able to move her legs to climb down from the slippery rocks. She still couldn't figure out why. Maybe the dimensions of the trouble she was getting into had seemed smaller, more distant? Perhaps it had been some sort of fucked up, extreme strategy for self-reaffirmation. Was that far-fetched?

Now, zipped inside that little tent, zipped inside the even smaller sleeping bag, Alex just felt like the worst possible asshole ever.

Back at home it would've been possible to end this, if only she hadn't asked her to come to Bali. But now, barely a week later, here, in a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, this thing already felt inevitable. There was nothing she could do but accept what she herself had contributed so thoroughly to create. If Piper had in fact crawled inside her heart, Alex herself had been the one to carve the tunnel.

The brunette cupped the girl's face and started kissing her fiercely, but then choked up. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't jump."

In one graceful movement, Piper frowned, shook her head, and shrugged. "What? Alex, it's okay. Really."

"Yeah, but-"

Piper hushed her, not even letting her finish the word. Sleepy and tired as she had to be, the blonde positioned herself on top of Alex, kissing and caressing her tentatively, and Alex didn't and couldn't object. She felt like Piper was curing her in a way, reassuring her.

The nylon fabric of the sleeping bag shuffled with their sluggish movements. There was no hurry now, no desperation. There was only Piper gently stripping her, slowly stroking her, patiently letting Alex's wetness gather on her fingers before pressing on, rolling her tongue over Alex's nipples, taking them between her lips once they'd hardened.

Nobody could've made them hurry, not even the creeping daylight, nor the boat that was to come pick them up, nor the promise of seeing dolphins and flying fish. Not even the colossal and gloomy cloud of smoke that kept emerging from the neighboring mountain.


	6. Basket

With the flabby pillow covering her sweaty head, Piper felt slightly better. More than anything, she craved for darkness and silence, so that maybe she could sleep soundly enough to forget the searing stomachache. However, that was an impossible fantasy, and not even because it was still around noon. Nighttime had proven to be a hundred times worse, in fact, as the bungalow's shabby walls of woven cane did nothing to fend off the laser lights, the deafening music, and the general screaming and whooping of the beachside parties. Basically, it was like trying to move and breathe and survive inside a large basket.

Her sudden sickness had cut short their excursion, as much as she'd wished to see more of the Javanese temples. She had started having an attack of stomach cramps just as they were passing through a small village. Physically lacking the time to explain what was happening to her -and what was bound to happen-, Piper had spontaneously started running down the dirt road in a panic, with a confused Alex sprinting behind her, yelling what the fuck was the matter with her. As if their mere presence hadn't been enough, their little performance had of course made the village's inhabitants come out of their cabin-like houses. What Piper hadn't noticed, however, was that they were following her as well, so, when she finally found a more or less isolated place among the tall grass to crouch and pull down her pants, there were an extra thirty or forty pairs of eyes she hadn't counted on, watching her intently. The brunette had thrown her backpack to the ground, bent over with laughter, which was to be expected, but then she'd started hearing other voices, other giggles.

Still feeling mortified, Piper groaned into the pillow, pressing it harder against her face. Alex had quickly taken her first to see a doctor and then to this seaside place, which Piper had believed was relaxing - until the sun went down and the tourists started partying like it was the end of the world.

And now Alex was nowhere to be found. Surely, the brunette was playing the socialite down at the beach, making friends and drinking cocktails, while she had been left to die in that goddamn hut. No, that wasn't it. Alex was working - even if that did involve drinking and socializing. It was no secret that Alex had mainly gone to Indonesia to work, but until now it had only consisted of many cryptic phone calls and a lot of typing on her laptop. It had been very easy to ignore, even if deep down Piper did notice everything. It seemed that Alex had become a little too absorbed in their romantic and or wild escapade, and had received some kind of fair warning from her boss or bosses. Either to prevent Piper from worrying or because she hadn't wanted to worry herself, Alex had matter-of-factly explained that there was no problem, that all she was required to do was to get some kids to smuggle some heroin into their suitcases' lining. That was it. Too easy. A done deal. But Piper had spent enough time around the dark-haired woman to know her quirks and if there was something going on behind her clear eyes. She was sure that it hadn't gone so smoothly, but of course Alex could fix it.

Meditating about the current state of her life was one of the luxuries and drawbacks of being sick - she had managed to do as little of that as possible until now, and she wished to keep it that way. As always, she pushed down the twinge of worry and focused on the unexpected and fantastic thing she had found. Her mind concentrated on the memory of Alex's devilish smile that first night they'd met. How easily the brunette had conquered her and swept her off her feet. And then they had started spending more and more time together, with Alex's mystery still in place. But that was okay, since it was all temporary anyway, right? Alex hadn't lied about her job, and had told her more than once that she was expected to travel abroad sooner rather than later. But the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and the brunette found her a job as a waitress very close to her very impressive house. And so Piper had started staying there more and more often, for days on end. Still trying to keep her distance -because this was temporary (wasn't it?)-, Piper had started feeling a weird sense of entitlement, of property, towards the woman. She hadn't wanted her to leave and hadn't wanted her to do to other girls what she had been doing to her, but it was unavoidable, so she swallowed that too, buried it as deep as she could, so that it hardly ever came to the fore. Then, on their supposedly last night together, she'd still kept quiet, going about her business of packing because it was a done deal, they were going their separate ways. But Alex had been more somber than usual, a little bit grumpy even, and Piper had been surprised to glimpse that part of her, usually nowhere to be found. And so she'd gone ahead and asked Alex if she would miss her, earning the woman's unfiltered affirmation, and then the request to go to Bali with her. Piper, who had kept her distance so as not to suffer more than necessary when Alex decided to leave and who'd had no expectations of accompanying her (because there had been plenty of time to ask), had realized that their adventure was an ongoing one.

And what a bacchanalia it had been. Piper had asked her "Are you serious?" every step of the way, and Alex's only answer had been to show her an even more incredible thing, so she felt like she was floating blissfully, never to land. Honestly, that was how she wanted it. No landing was necessary.

Suddenly, she felt a moist kiss precisely on the strip of skin that was visible between her top and her shorts. She lifted the pillow to discover the dark-haired woman kneeling next to the bed, her lips still on her belly.

"So, what's the score?" Alex asked, circling Piper's belly button with one finger. "Who's winning?"

"Stomach virus, 12 - Piper, 0."

"Aww, you'll get there, babe, you'll kick its ass."

"How are you?" Piper asked, bringing a hand to Alex's face.

As expected, the brunette shrugged. She wasn't going to get into that. "Fine. I was just wondering if you were in need of a big spoon."

Piper smiled and carefully turned onto her side, making room for Alex. The bikini-clad woman climbed into the bed and pressed her body against Piper's back. One hand gently covered her upset stomach, while the other combed back her hair.

"No, don't get too close, I'm all sweaty and disgusting."

"I don't care." Alex said, placing a kiss on her humid temple. "Looks like you're still a bit warm. But you're better."

"Yeah…" Piper closed her eyes. "I can't sleep at all in this place, though."

"Come here, turn around. No puking, though."

The blonde faced a grinning Alex, who held her against her breast. She then covered Piper's eyes with her hand. "That better?"

"Uh-huh."

Her skin felt cool, even if she had just come in from the sun, because Piper's was hotter, and she had brought a faint odor of pot into the room. Relaxing against the woman's body, Piper tried to synchronize their breathing patterns. She felt weak and incredibly vulnerable, perhaps more than ever, but knew that she was safe. More than anything, she believed in Alex's protection.

She recalled how she'd been the one to take care of Alex the night they'd watched the volcano, how invincible they'd been for a moment, how alone in the world. That night, she'd actually seen how much the brunette needed her, and how wonderful and terrible it must've made her feel - how helpless. Because Alex was happy being the strongest magnet in the world, and Piper was happy to bask in her attractive pull, but this thing between them wasn't a one-way street; it couldn't be, or it would've finished much earlier. With her touches, she'd tried to inform Alex that it was okay to feel that way and, most importantly, that she wasn't going anywhere. She hoped she had managed to communicate that yes, Alex was allowed to be that scared little girl once in a while, even if the other ninety-nine percent of the time she was that object of unstoppable attraction.

That night, Alex had sighed into her mouth and dug her fingers into the skin of her arms and back, and whispered that she loved her before falling asleep. Piper hadn't known if Alex had been conscious of what she'd said, and still wasn't exactly sure of it now either. It had just happened that one time.

But what did she feel? What did she feel, day in, day out, during every single minute they spent together? That there was an invisible thread linking them, that the universe sometimes threw the dice in a very promising manner and people called it destiny. Piper didn't believe in destiny, but believing in that inexplicable thread that bound them… yes, she was somehow capable of doing that.

Piper grasped Alex's hand, the one that was covering her eyes, and pushed it upwards so that she could see the other woman's face. How could she believe in the consistence of their feelings when they were just two people floating in a space continuum, building their foundations in the clouds, like an air castle? She didn't know how, but it felt real.

It could be the fever. It could be that she was feeling sick, and down, and rather repulsive. It could be that the inhabitants of an entire village were probably still laughing at her, and that "home" was so far away that she felt she couldn't even remember the façade of her parent's house. It could be that she no longer had a home, that she no longer answered Polly's e-mails to narrate the million things she'd seen and done. What was the point, when she had become this being on an unending journey? It was scary, how good it felt, to be so unconnected to anything but Alex, to have Alex as the only constant, and only home.

And if that was love, well… then she was in it.

"I love you too," she whispered, choosing to assume that Alex had in fact said it first, several nights before, and this was just Piper answering her, saying it back, if only with a bit of a holdup.

Judging by the brunette's reacting expression, Piper realized that she had been right, that Alex had indeed murmured those words in the tent, and also that she remembered having done so. She looked stunned, but not as much as she would've been if Piper's words had come out of the blue, without context.

Alex kissed her and embraced her feverish body cautiously, surely being less effusive than she would've been if Piper had been her usual self. The brunette was holding back, and Piper felt her trembling slightly with emotion, which overwhelmed her and made her teary-eyed.


	7. A Running Palm Tree

Perched on one of the large rocks scattered in clusters of four or five along the shore, the brunette was stoically ignoring the thick screen of rain blowing over the entire island. Piper was standing a few meters back, under the tree line, as if that could offer some protection. The needle-like raindrops fell so hard that they simply pushed away the leaves of the trees and palm trees. It wasn't long before her feet were sinking in the sand submerged within a small puddle.

She screamed Alex's name, received no answer, and proceeded to run towards the rocks - or attempt to run. The sand, which when dry was white as newly fallen snow, was now grey due to the torrential rain. The whole beach, in fact, appeared to have turned several shades darker. Additionally, the sand's texture now felt weirdly mushy, and her feet stuck to it with every step like she was trying to pass through quicksand.

Climbing the rock wasn't as easy as it looked, since it was wet and slippery, and the soles of Piper's feet were muddy, but at least now the brunette had noticed her, and hoisted her to where she was sitting, Buddha-like in posture.

"Didn't you hear me?"

Alex's hair was so wet that it didn't even move with the head shake. Parted in the middle, framing her cheeks, and falling over her shoulders uniformly, it looked like a black hood.

"Let's go back to our room." Piper started pulling at her hand.

"Are you cold?"

"No, but there's nothing to do here."

"You could always do me," the brunette said, with a casual shrug.

As quickly and easily as striking a match, Piper felt the spark of desire. It never really seemed to go away or diminish, even after so much time, even after exchanging "I love you's". The better she knew that body, the more she needed to explore it, and the more she got to hear every little inflection of that voice, the more she strove to elicit those responses. It didn't really make sense, of course, but she couldn't help but feel that, just as she had been moving around the world, she had been moving over Alex -under Alex, on top of Alex, for sure-, but primarily over that body of skin, through both freshwater and salty water, through white sand and black sand, silk sheets and impossibly green grass, sleeping bags and hammocks, high-speed trains and dingy buses, tasting everything and taking everything with her. And she felt that those things would be unwashable, no matter how many showers she took or how hard she scrubbed.

Alex kissed her and pulled her onto her lap, making Piper straddle her bent legs. She surrounded Alex's shoulders with her arms, feeling the delicious rush of being on the edge of a big, tall rock, with a flood between their mouths.

Discarding the winding road because it took longer to get to the resort buildings, they pushed through the trees and the heavy vegetation hand in hand, giggling and shrieking when the freezing trickles of water fell from the trees and shattered on their backs with malignant accuracy. The fact that the brunette was shoving her against random tree trunks to kiss her along the way made Piper's head spin so fast that she thought she wouldn't make it back to the room.

They found refuge under the wooden beams of the bucolic hotel bar, looking like they had just jumped out of the pages of 'The Lord of the Flies', muddy and soaked to the bone. Alex's loud laugh resonated through the area, causing the peaceful guests to turn around. Piper stood with her hands behind her back, innocently, her messy mane dripping on the floor like a mop. She was expecting one of the exceedingly polite hotel workers to escort them away from all those hypersensitive gazes, but Alex quickly snatched her hand and took her away.

They got to their suite through the terrace, where the rain was hammering like hail on the white umbrellas. Alex slid open the heavy glass door and they stumbled inside the small living room, tripping over the coffee table covered with brochures ("A COUPLE WHO SPAS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER" - Four Seasons Resort Seychelles). Piper yelped as she fell on the olive green sofa and sunk among the cushions, with Alex on top of her.

She was pulled to her feet again and redirected to the bathroom. Their clothes were so wet that their shirts were almost as transparent as the skin shed by a snake, and dropped on the floor with a heavy splat. Later, they would just throw them into the hallway.

Blindly stepping into the bathtub, Piper leaned against the tiled wall and soon felt the warm water showering over her head. Alex squeezed a dollop of soap onto her hands, rubbed it between them, and proceeded to massage her body. Holding onto Alex's shoulders, she let the woman work, her slippery fingers creating a layer of white foam wherever they roamed.

The sweet aroma of the almond-based soap clashed with the sharp scent of the jungle still clinging to Alex's skin and hair.

"What about you?" Piper managed to ask.

Chuckling, Alex plucked a couple of leaves from Piper's hair and let them fall. The leaves floated towards the drain and then spiraled around it like they were doing a frantic dance number. Then, as a sort of answer to Piper's question, Alex pinned her against the wall, her hands holding onto Piper's ass for support, and started rubbing against her as if the blonde had become a human-sized sponge.

Piper gasped into the brunette's ear as their soapy breasts slid in and out of contact. "I thought… I thought _I_ was supposed to do _you_."

Alex's hand squeezed her ass one last time before snaking between her legs, her fingers stroking her so lightly that Piper whined piteously, her previous protest all but forgotten. There were only Alex's fingertips taking turns in torturing her, now pressing against her lips, now slipping between them for a second. It wasn't enough, not by far. She tried to hold Alex's wrist to keep her hand in place, but the brunette freed herself easily, aided by the lather of soap covering them.

Was it possible to die from unfulfilled desire? It actually felt similar to a fever, but instead of weakening her like the one she'd caught in Java, this one consumed her in a different way. She felt possessed by a fury, and Alex knew it because she could surely read it in her eyes, and the brunette had the guts to grin at her knowingly before crouching in front of her.

Piper's eyes opened wide as she nodded, and grabbed the metal bar which thankfully was nailed to the tiled wall. Alex lifted one of Piper's legs and gently placed it over her shoulder before embarking on a topsy-turvy path of kisses which started in Piper's belly button. Her mouth closed around Piper's outer lips, slowly, like a first kiss, but then the devil inside Alex sent her tongue as a mischievous emissary. There was no innocence in the way the tip of that tongue ran up and down Piper's lips and dipped between them. The blonde risked her safety by allowing one of her hands let go of the metal bar and close around Alex's wet hair, because trying to push that head into her was far more important.

Somehow, miraculously, extraordinarily, it worked. Alex complied, and Piper was good and ready to believe in whichever god wanted to claim responsibility, as the flat of Alex's tongue started drawing the most perfect shapes ever conceived. Wet as they were, Alex appeared to have no doubts as to which wetness was inherently Piper's, and collected it with her tongue before running it over her very desperate clit. For an eternal moment, she became warmer than the curtain of water surrounding her, and was almost ready to come, but then felt Alex's fingers inside her, working her at a constant rhythm, and felt her impending orgasm back down, morph into more pleasure.

Her hand let go of the woman's head and moved back to the metal bar, for fear of crashing down. Looking down at Alex, her lips around her clit, her blue eyes shining with a malice that seemed to say "I'm not done with you yet", Piper surrendered to the "come hither" movement of Alex's index and middle finger, the delicious pressure on her walls, the apparently unending cycle of pleasure.

Then, suddenly, as her screams echoed against the tiled walls, she felt lighter than air, and exploded like an overflowing water balloon under a fountain.

"Oh my God!" Alex cried, her fingers pressing onto Piper's trembling thighs.

"What the fuck…?" she gasped, still out of breath. "What the actual fuck… was that?"

With her surprised eyebrows almost touching her hairline and a growing smile, the brunette rose to her feet. "Fuck me! I didn't know you could do that."

"Do what? Was that…?"

Alex laughed. "Looks like you just squirted, Pipes."

"I… Really?"

"Yeah! I must've done something very, very well."

The brunette kissed her, then helped her out of the bathtub and covered her with a white bathrobe. Piper had to admit that, whatever she had done to her, it had been more than amazing. In fact, she still felt very light, as if her molecules hadn't yet regrouped completely and were still a bit spread out, with spaces of air between them.

"I want to hear how great I am," Alex said, as they curled on top of the canopy bed, both wearing bathrobes. Hugging her from behind, she kissed Piper's cheek several times.

"Well, of course you do," Piper said, clutching one of Alex's hands. The truth was that she still felt her center throbbing like a second heart.

On a related note, she could also feel Alex's heart beating fast against her back. Turning to face the brunette, Piper raised her eyebrows, asked what was wrong.

"Tomorrow," Alex said, simply.

"Tomorrow what?"

"Tomorrow's back to the States."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. For a while."

Piper didn't know how to digest that piece of news. It didn't have to change anything, although it was really the other way around, more like stepping on the brakes: no more changes for some time. Yes, they had already been living together in Alex's house, but that had been before frolicking through half the world. What if…? What if it didn't feel the same? What if part of the spell was in the constant travelling?

"Are you worried?" Alex asked, furrowing her brow.

"Aren't you?"

"'Course not! Pipes! Besides, what do you suggest? Do you want us to stay here, become pirates?"

"Pirates."

"Yeah."

The blonde eyed the other woman suspiciously. "I just… God, the way your brain works! Are you very high right now?"

Alex laughed hoarsely. "I think I could rock an eye patch… I'd have to wear a monocle, though. But I've got the rum thing covered. Come on, I could be a pirate."

"Yes, because being a drug dealer obviously isn't enough for you."

Alex made a grimace, looked away for a moment, but then a cheeky smile crept over her lips. "Then let's just get ourselves stranded in some desert island."

Piper laughed. "Look at us, do you think we would last a week?"

"Pfft! Speak for yourself! I'll totally survive. It's gonna be awesome, babe, think of all the stories we'll have."

That was something the brunette said whenever things took an unexpected turn, supposedly for the worse. Change was always good in Alex's eyes, it seemed, and uniformity appeared to make her feel caged and smothered. Piper had to wonder if even being a pirate would be exciting enough for her.

And now they had to go back, and she had to return to her supposed home, where everybody's lives had probably evolved, moved forwards, while her life had been put on hold. She had been moving around, of course, but in circles, or spirals, not lines, and it hadn't mattered, just as long as she never had to stop.

"You're so full of yourself. And I think you've watched 'The Blue Lagoon' too many times."

"Wait, is that the one with Brooke Shields? In that case… yeah, probably." Alex giggled and attempted an innocent expression. "So, if milady isn't pleased with my excellent suggestions… We'll just have to go back."

"Okay." Piper sighed, accepted Alex's wet, tender kiss.

"We fucking love each other. The rest doesn't matter."

For whatever reason, she recalled the story Alex had humorously told her about the Coco de Mer palm trees, that nobody really knew how those towering trees pollinated, but legend had it that, whenever a storm passed through the islands, the male palms uprooted themselves and had their way with the smaller, female palms in an orgy of rain and flaying leaves. Perhaps she was remembering it because she felt that they were so far removed from their old world that it wouldn't even shock her to look out the window and spot a running palm tree.


	8. A Circuit

As soon as she opened the door, the familiar scent of her loft rolled out like a vaporous greeting. She dumped her keys, the brown paper bag, and the other shopping bag on top of the kitchen island and glanced around the place. She remembered how they had gone around the house blowing out every candle before leaving for the airport, with their suitcases waiting by the door, stood upright like impatient children. Now, apart from the smell, the stillness of her surroundings was what Alex was now finding most noticeable in an almost chilling manner. Everything was in order - too much order.

Well, it was only natural, she guessed, after such a long trip, to still feel a bit weirded out. After the constant plane-hopping, bus-catching, and hitchhiking, after the incessant partying, the constant chattering, and the backdrop of every accent under the sun, those rooms were simply too static and too fucking quiet.

She fished inside the paper bag, pulled out a beer, and walked into the bedroom. Scattered on top of the long, rectangular dresser was an assortment of tiny bottles and transparent plastic boxes: some of Piper's makeup. Using her thumb and index finger, she picked up one of the bottles and immediately let it drop back on the dresser. It reminded her of something she had bought, something which was still inside the untouched shopping bag in the kitchen, something called Dermablend Cover cream.

Slumping on the bed, Alex pulled down the zippers of her tall leather boots, kicked them off, and took small, resolute sips from the beer can.

To be truthful, Piper's absence was perhaps the most noticeable thing of all, but everything was going to be fine. It _was_ fine. Piper was just visiting her family and would be back soon, and then they'd talk and the girl would understand. Alex made the choice to concentrate on the positive aspects, and she could always do that, looking at her beautiful surroundings, reminding herself of all she had managed to achieve. There was no reason to believe that something would go wrong, although bad things were beginning to happen here and there. It turned out that some of their fellow travelers had been caught and, consequently, she'd been forced to take some wilder chances, being a bit more reckless with her couriers, because her output still needed to be as consistent as before.

In short, she needed somebody new, and unknown, and invisible, and she needed them soon. It had to be Piper.

Alex padded her way back to the kitchen, sat on the island, and snapped open a second beer, her lips quickly covering the can's semi-circular opening to capture the emerging foam. That was when she heard a rattling of keys and the front door open. A rather made-up blonde woman dragging a trolley entered the far end of the loft. This was city-Piper, family-Piper, and she would also require some getting used to, after all the continuous semi-nakedness and glorious bad hair.

"Hey," Piper waved a vague hand, ditched her suitcase next to the umbrella stand, and started walking towards her.

"Hey, babe!" she cried out, moving her dangling legs back and forth.

Remaining atop the kitchen island, Alex waited for the girl to reach her. God, she had missed her, and couldn't help but smile - which was a good thing, since that was precisely what she had to do. Having already made the conscious decision to convince Piper -since there was no other way-, it all needed to start with that greeting and that smile. That it was genuine didn't hurt either.

Piper positioned herself between Alex's legs to hug her waist. She seemed very happy to see her, but also tired. That was family for you. Alex took off her glasses and placed them next to her on the counter. She pressed her lips against Piper's and then against her forehead, lingering there like she was taking her temperature. Those two simple tastings of the girl's warm skin already made her want to eat her up. And the only explanation she could think of was that inside her, the individual wicks of love and desire were apparently lit by the same spark - a spark which undoubtedly had the face, body, and voice of the blonde woman standing before her. And, having thought about it quite a lot, she knew she could map the trajectory of those two wicks, to her heart, to her lower abdomen, and connecting both like a continuous circuit. A circuit, yes, which she usually visualized as an infinity symbol, with that spark running round and round, from love to lust.

So there was love born out of desire, and desire born out of love, with no way of separating one from the other, or even discerning which was which. No, because it was what it was. One feels what one feels, and calls it love, like it isn't a million tiny things at once, a million minuscule particles of foreign DNA bombarding our own cells and invading them - another person crawling into one's heart.

"Was it bad?" she asked, grinning at Piper's pouty lips, combing a couple of strands behind her ear.

"Worse. I mean, they're my family, but…"

"But they drive you nuts. You can't stand them."

"Yes. No. I don't know! I think… I think I've become unaccustomed to them? It's like we're not living in the same world anymore. They're also very suspicious about my life right now. I don't know…"

Unable to control herself any longer, Alex started kissing Piper's incredibly soft neck. She crossed her legs, capturing Piper between them.

"Well, you look like you could use a beer." She stretched her arm, reached into the paper bag, and waved one of the cans before Piper's eyes. The girl grabbed it quickly and drank with abandon.

"And your friend?"

"No!" Piper pointed at her with her index finger. "Don't even get me started with Polly. She's giving me hell, and she's right. I've all but ignored her during months, and it's not like I didn't have stuff to tell her. There's so much stuff I could write a goddamn book, but I couldn't make myself sit and phone, or write to her, and I don't know why, I don't know why I'm being so selfish."

"Whoa, what's with the blaming, Pipes? No, you're not. You're just finally living your life."

"Or… I'm living yours."

The brunette raised her eyebrows for a moment and uncrossed her legs, releasing Piper. When the girl didn't budge one inch, Alex used her naked foot to gently push her away. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

"I'm sorry," Piper glanced down, moved her hand over Alex's thigh, "that wasn't fair."

"No it wasn't. And also, fuck you." She kept her leg stretched out, as a way of maintaining Piper at a distance. "It's very simple, kid. Do you like being with me?"

"Of course I do, Al." She brought her hand down to Alex's foot and started caressing it, her thumb massaging her sole. "You know I do. I'm sorry."

"And you're having fun, right?"

"If I weren't, would I feel so fucking… disconnected to anybody else?"

Alex shrugged, but pulled back her leg, allowing the blonde to approach her once more and hug her. With her lips pressed against Piper's shoulder and those fingers she had missed so much caressing her hair, Alex felt she could finally close her eyes.

However, there was still the irksome matter of the pending job in Europe. It would mean not keeping those two aspects of her life separate anymore, but wasn't Piper a part of it already? Wasn't she much more than a tag-along? Alex thought about their trip to Bali, when her funds to treat her drug couriers had started running low. She had asked Piper to withdraw several money wires from a number of Indonesian banks, money sent by Fahri. That itself had been illegal, but it hadn't been a very big deal for Piper: either she hadn't known that making those withdrawals was a crime in itself, or perhaps she'd been able to convince herself to overlook that tiny detail because it had been a means to an end, a way for the adventure to continue, because Piper clearly did not want it to end.

"I came back as soon as I could," Piper was saying. "I felt like running all the way back here. Why do you feel real, but nothing else does?"

She turned her head and started kissing down Piper's neck, hooking her finger on the collar of the girl's shirt to expose her cleavage. With a wry smile, she foretold that Piper would do the job. It was quick and simple, and it provided her with a way out from her family- and friend-related duties, and all of their repetitive questions. Alex knew that Piper had stuck her head back inside her old life and hadn't liked it; she had grown unused to it, and used to the life Alex offered her. Ergo, if she wanted more of it, she would have to do this. Plus, it was another adventure. She wouldn't even have to "sell it" to the girl, or "pitch it" too nicely, because it would still be nothing but the truth.

"'Cause you're mine," Alex said, with a small headshake, thinking about the truth at its simplest.

Piper, however, frowned at her and stepped back. Alex watched her turn around and walk away from the kitchen island, but didn't react until Piper reached the living room area and sat on one of the sofas. Then, she jumped down, traced the girl's steps, and kneeled behind the sofa, resting her chin on her arms, and her arms on the back of the sofa. Piper wasn't turning around, of course, but Alex moved her hands to the woman's rigid shoulders and started massaging them. Then, she approached her lips to Piper's ear.

"And I'm yours."

That had an immediate effect. The girl's shoulders slumped, and then leaned into Alex's expert hands, which snaked under Piper's hair to gain access to her back. Piper bunched up her hair and tied it into a high ponytail, exposing the small fish on the back of her neck. For a second, Alex's eyes welled up, but she was able to make the wave recede.

The tattoo was still somewhat recent, but it wasn't scabby anymore, so its bright orange and blue colors stood out just like they did in the tropical waters. The morning Alex lost the blue bracelet Piper had given her, presumably in those same waters, they'd gone scuba diving and Piper had spotted the fish. She had followed it around while Alex followed her, and Alex had to wonder if there had been a single moment during their trip to the Seychelles where they hadn't been soaked in water, rain or no rain.

Her fingers traced the fins of the fish, and she bent down to kiss it, remembering that bad-girl-Piper with a tattoo would have to make that tattoo disappear to be an actual bad girl transporting a suitcase stuffed with drug money.

Having no idea of what Alex was thinking, Piper turned around and kissed her, her fingers closing around Alex's shirt and pulling her over the sofa. Alex slung a leg over the back of the sofa, climbing onto it as if it was a horse, and then slowly descended over Piper, who received her in the best possible of ways: by pulling at her clothes to take them off.

"What if I told you," Alex began, her words interrupted and muffled by the other woman's mouth. "What if I told you that we could be on the road again very soon?"

"Are you serious?" Piper stopped, opened her eyes.

"Just you and me, no more fellow travelers for a while. And…" she took a moment to bite on Piper's lip. "I know how you love Europe."

"Oh my God!"

"I know. You just have to say yes. Are you up for an adventure?"

"Yes, yes," Piper whispered, sliding her hands between their tightly pressed bodies.

The brunette gasped as Piper's fingers closed around her breasts, applying an intermittent pressure. She ran her tongue along the woman's lower lip, sinking the entire length of her body into Piper, rubbing her nipples against the palms of Piper's hands.

As they kissed, the blonde moved her hands to Alex's hips, and started pulling upwards, gently but stubbornly. Slightly amused, Alex complied, allowing Piper to do with her whatever she wanted. When she understood what that thing was, her smile changed. How she'd missed feeling that skin, and that mouth all over her body, and those hands, which were now easing her into a different position.

Alex's knees sunk into the cushions, her left hand holding fast onto the arm of the sofa, while her right closed around Piper's hair. The blonde's hands caressed up her thighs, reached her ass, and grabbed it to lower Alex onto her face.

She bent down her head to be able to look into Piper's eyes the moment the blonde started licking her, a cascade of black hair falling over her face. And, as her sex opened up for Piper's mouth in a kind of long-awaited mutual kiss, Alex started rocking back and forth, helped by the support that the arm of the sofa was offering.

With Piper's hands still firmly grabbing her ass to help her move, Alex felt the waves of pleasure radiating upwards, like a tree growing inside her, intermittently, with each stroke. And then, slowly but surely, Piper was also the one setting that same tree on fire, with its grey smoke clouding up Alex's brain. That was how she felt it happening, and pleaded for more, her voice low and growly, and her body trying to do all the work, but Piper's tongue was drawing smaller and smaller shapes around and on her clit, and it was happening faster than Alex could move her hips, and so they were colliding instead of moving in unison, but every collision brought her a little bit closer, just a little bit, until the fucking tree burst into flames and she was left whimpering and panting against the back of the sofa with a sweaty hand still enclosing a big chunk of Piper's blonde hair.

She dropped next to the girl, who was smiling and smacking her shiny lips. Alex kissed her, tasting the peculiar coolness of her own wetness, and then cuddled against her, for the moment too spent to function. She had missed her too much, and she shouldn't be forced to miss her again. That was another reason for working towards the permanence of their adventure. It was just too fucking important. In the grand scheme of things, what was the significance of transporting a little suitcase full of money?


	9. Lifeboat

The mere action of waking up felt like attempting to lift the weight of the world with her eyelids. When she tried to blink again, her eyelashes grazed the white sheet which was partially covering her face and making her look like the Phantom of the Opera. Next, she tried to speak, but the only sound which her throat allowed to pass through was a ridiculous croak, which nevertheless was enough to make the body beside her stir. They were both lying stomach down, completely naked except for the twisted sheet, one of Piper's arms dangling from the side of the bed, her hand firmly planted on the floor, while Alex was half-strewn on top of her, with her blue-streaked black hair snaked around Piper's neck like a scarf.

Little by little, her brain started to become aware of her immediate surroundings: the big bed, the hotel room. Yes, those were things she could recognize: the white sheets, the pastel wallpaper, the little lamps nailed to the wall above the bedside tables, the white doors with golden handles. And, above everything, there was Alex, the one constant she could count on. The hotel rooms could be as varied and different-colored as birds of paradise, but the dark-haired beauty never failed to be there with her, sometimes asleep, sometimes awake, and sometimes in a sweet, vulnerable, in-between state which always made Piper's heart swell. Whether they happened to be on a tiny bunk or a king-sized bed, they were always in contact when they fell asleep, and kept finding each other during the night. Sometimes their blind groping only culminated in satisfied sighs, and sometimes it awoke different parts of their bodies, shifting limbs, opening mouths, curling fingers. She liked it when it was slow, when it started with lazy, sloppy kisses and Alex's tongue traced her lips as if she was trying to paint over them. She liked it fast and hard, too, when they seemed to bump against each other in the dark like two strangers in a tunnel, when they fucked like two needy addicts, desperately holding onto whatever felt like skin, when she rode Alex's body like a wave -grinding on her thighs, her fingers, her tongue-, with the headboard as her only lifeboat, and their sweat mingled and made them slide easily against each other. She liked listening to Alex as well; in fact, the mere sound of her deep voice moaning was enough to make Piper wet, touched between her legs by an invisible, very warm tongue.

Her drowsy brain then widened its scope: which city, which country. Yes, that took a bit longer to determine. When she remembered them, Piper felt an involuntary pang in her stomach which jump-started her heart, making it race crazily. They were little, irritating stabs against the inside of her chest which she classified as remnants of the fright. She didn't want to think about it, how her relief had been about the thing being finally over, never to be done again, while Alex's relief had been about everything having gone according to plan, without any hiccups. She didn't want to think about her "costume" scattered across the hotel room floor, or about how desperately she had taken it off. She didn't want to think about how Alex had fulfilled her promise of eating her for dinner as a kind of reward for having done the job so well and the bonus of having skipped customs -even if that had been by mistake-, because Piper hadn't wanted to be rewarded - she had wanted to forget, and let herself be taken care of by Alex accordingly. And when the brunette had started whispering things like "Who's my bad girl," sweet and well-intended as they'd been, Piper had shut her up immediately by shoving her tongue inside the other woman's mouth.

Emptying the mini-bar had been rather helpful too, although now she was starting to be sorry to have taken that road to oblivion.

She felt a hand on her naked back, moving in circles, and then a wet kiss between her shoulders. "Morning, babe."

Forming actual words was still too complicated. Piper could only manage an answering groan while she reached back to stroke Alex's hair, her fingers sinking easily within the black, silky strands.

"I think someone's up for coffee," said the brunette, dragging her parted lips across the curve of Piper's neck. "Don't worry, I'm calling room service."

Even if she could tell that Alex was climbing out of bed carefully, the blonde still felt her entire universe move, as if she were a tiny raft adrift in the middle of an angry ocean. She pushed her face into the pillow and pulled it up around her head to cover her ears while Alex rattled on the phone in a humorous mixture of French and English, probably using more words than she had to just to prove that she could.

"Pipes? You awake?"

"No." She lifted the pillow just enough to peek at Alex, who was crouching next to the bed.

The brunette made a funny, scrunched up face at her and slid her index finger under the pillow, gently poking Piper on the nose.

Through the space between the pillow and the mattress, Piper watched the naked woman stand up and walk out of the bedroom and into the small sitting room. She couldn't help but visually trace Alex's sinewy arms, the seductive curve of her back, and the shape of her ass, particularly how her saunter transformed it into a very hypnotizing pendulum. Framed by the bedroom's white, double door, the brunette stretched -reminding Piper of a black panther- and then disappeared from view.

She managed to toss away the pillow, because it needed to be done quickly -like pulling off a band aid-, or not at all, and turned to lie on her back. The effort proved to be more costly than it should have been, and she could only conclude that gin was definitely _not_ her drink, as confirmed by the nail being driven into her left temple. She hadn't even felt this badly in Tahiti, where she'd needed to spend every day, from morning to evening, lounging in the beach, dead to the world, to recover from the nightly parties. Alex had certainly made fun of her then and should have been making fun of her now, but where was she?

Cursing her weakness, her dependence on that dark-haired woman, she hauled her own body to a sitting position and then planted her feet on the floor. This was the trickiest part. Grabbing the headboard for support -just like several hours before, but in a very different context-, Piper pulled herself to a standing position and began walking tentatively around the room. She was, in fact, inversely retracing their path towards the bed. Her feet ran into the now-empty miniature transparent bottles from their mini-bar raid, and she had to suppress a wave of nausea, also brought on by spotting some elements of her disguise as "a proper young lady" intermixed with Alex's jet-black clothes.

There was a knock on the door, and Piper kept very still in her naked state as she listened to Alex opening the door and muttering her "merci beaucoup". When the door closed once more, Piper poked her head out of the bedroom and saw that the bellboy had rolled in a small cart full of pastries, and she could also smell coffee and hot chocolate. One empty teacup had been set on the coffee table before the sofa.

To Piper's relief, the brunette hadn't greeted the bellboy stark naked, but had thrown on the hotel's bathrobe, and had left the other one for Piper, draped on the arm of the sofa. However, she frowned upon seeing Alex sitting at the small desk, with her back to the food, typing away on her laptop and stopping every once in a while to sip on a cup of coffee.

"Did you just order everything they had?" she asked, entering the sitting room and putting on the bathrobe.

The black-haired woman just shrugged, without turning around. "You need to eat something, don't you? Get that stomach to work on something solid."

Piper sat cross-legged on the sofa and picked a plate which contained two waffles. Brussels was, after all, known for them, among other tasty things. She also poured herself some of that delicious-smelling chocolate, even if her brain probably needed coffee more, but who could resist?

"You know what? I think I actually prefer your pancakes," she said, as she chewed, starting to feel better.

"Huh?"

"Nothing." She sighed, fixing her eyes on the back of the brunette's head.

Alex's shoulders slumped and stayed like that for a moment before she slung one arm over the back of the chair and turned to look at Piper. Her lips were pressed together tightly, and there was a tiny frown knitting her eyebrows. "I'm sorry, babe. I have to finish this. I gotta coordinate-"

"Okay," Piper raised one hand to make the brunette stop talking. She didn't want to know. "It's okay."

"Although I will have some of that," Alex said, reaching out to seize Piper's hand, the one that held a half-eaten waffle. The brunette took a big bite from it and shielded her sugar-covered mouth, giggling like a naughty child, and turning around to face the computer again.

The blonde finished stuffing herself and went into the bathroom to take a shower. It was a blatant ploy to attract the brunette towards her, leaving the door open so that the running water was clearly audible. Piper stood there among the white marble, fists clenched, waiting under the warm cascade of water. However, Alex did not sneak into the shower behind her; she didn't even step into the bathroom.

When she exited the bedroom through the white double door, already dressed, she acknowledged that the brunette hadn't moved from the computer.

"Al? Aren't we going out to explore?"

"You go ahead. I'll catch up with you later." Alex answered, her voice automatic, unemotional.

"What?" Piper approached the small desk, even if she could see the white screen with the corner of her eye. "Are you telling me to go out by myself?"

The brunette took off her glasses and exhaled a frustrated sigh. "Well, Pipes, it's not fucking Fallujah, you know? I'm just saying that _I_ can't go out right now, but you can do whatever you want. Go to museums. I don't know, buy some souvenirs. But hey, if you wanna stay here at the boring hotel, be my guest."

Piper frowned at the woman, all at once feeling a bit ridiculous for being so desperate to be reassured, tranquilized, told that everything was fine. However, at the same time, she was just requesting that sense of security which Alex had always given her. Wasn't it only natural to miss something her body had grown accustomed to? Her mind automatically rewound to their trip to the inland part of Bali, all rice fields and Hindu temples, and remembered an eleventh-century temple called Goa Gajah -the "elephant cave"-, and how creepy it had seemed at first, with an assortment of demons and menacing creatures carved on its façade, its entrance a big mouth that literally swallowed you when you went in. The brunette had made fun of her cowardice, because the scary-looking exterior contained a mere bathing place excavated on the inside of the mountain - but Piper had already felt safe before entering the cave, all because Alex had imbued her with courage by grasping her hand.

That was it; she just needed Alex to be Alex and do her thing: take her hand, sweep her away, and submerge her into the magic of that city like she had done with every other place. And she needed it now more than ever, since she still felt all tingly from having brushed the dangerous part of Alex's life with the tips of her fingers. What she didn't need was to see Alex with her head stuck in that life, so absorbed by it.

She was aware of her own neediness, of course, it irked her, but she hadn't seen her dependence as a bad thing before, not as a sign of weakness per se, because there had never been negative consequences to it. It was just a fact she'd accepted many, many months ago - a fact laced with other truths: that she needed Alex; that she felt disconnected to everyone else; that before Alex she had been sleep-walking through her own life; that Alex made her feel safe.

After the abundance of beaches and open spaces, this was a big change of scenery. Piper paced around the city, feeling like one of those children raised by wild animals who are abruptly brought to civilization. It was true that "home" had felt weird, but familiar as well, like remembering a past life or living in a constant déjà vu, but this… She roamed the Grand Place, throwing back her head to contemplate the town hall, which looked like a Gothic castle. Many of the buildings seemed downright medieval, with pointy roofs and lots of narrow windows.

Leaving the central square, she found the city's main symbol and one of its main attractions: a bronze fountain statue of a little boy peeing. She did what Alex would surely recommend her to do if she had been there: sit in a café and watch, examine the people, listen to their incomprehensible languages, and get into the ebb and flow of the place. Alex would also say that beer was an excellent remedy for a hangover, so Piper ordered a glass and kept to herself.

There were hundreds of varieties of Belgian beer, and Piper had very-conveniently landed on the place which had all four-hundred of them, plus more than a thousand others from every corner of the world. She was sure that Alex would love the café, with its entrance signs bearing pink elephants, its barrels for tables, and heavily decorated interior.

Unsure of how long she'd been in that dimly-lit bar, the blonde downed the last of her pint and was about to get up to leave when she thought she spotted a familiar silhouette swinging her hips to zigzag around the stools and barrels. However, she didn't gesture towards the figure until she saw the gleam of the yellow lights reflected on her glasses.

"Alex?"

Smiling widely in surprise, the brunette raised her eyebrows and moved faster in her direction. She was already holding a big glass of brown beer between her hands, and was wearing leather pants and a red checkered shirt. Unaccustomed to running into Alex, because they always went together everywhere, Piper suddenly didn't know what to do, apart from standing up. The dark-haired woman embraced her, which could seem excessive for the time they'd been apart, but the blonde found that she needed the hug. She leaned into the other woman, surrounding her shoulders with her arms, pressing their breasts and thighs together.

"How did you find me? Did you have me followed?"

"Have you followed?" Alex laughed and shook her head, scoffing at her. "Are you fucking kidding me? Who do you think I am?"

"Then how are you here?"

"Duh! Because this is only the best fucking bar in the world! I was dying to come here! I knew you wouldn't be far; this is the area tourists always visit first… the peeing boy and whatnot."

"Yeah, I saw that. And I knew you'd love this place. You do like your horror vacui."

Nodding, Alex surveyed the plaque-covered walls. There were signs of different brands of beer everywhere in sight, ceiling included. "You know me, I'm a bit excessive. Come on, let's get you another beer."

"Wait." Piper grasped Alex's hand and caressed up her wrist, reaching the woman's tribal bracelet tattoo. "I'm sorry… about before."

"It's fine." The brunette looked down at their entwined hands for a moment and then freed herself to place her glasses on top of her forehead. "But you know that I gotta work, don't you? You know that all that drug money pays for some very nice things."

Piper shrugged. "And you know that's not what I care about."

"Look, I'm just a bit stressed out. It's not a big deal."

Covering Piper's hand with her own, Alex smiled in that enchanting, quizzical way which had drove the blonde crazy since the very first moment they'd met, with that same twinkle in her blue eyes. But that was then and this was now, and the fact that the feeling it provoked was absolutely the same made Piper quiver from the inside out. Her very irritating weakness once again didn't matter, because Alex was there with her.

"I just… I just don't want to lose what we have."

"Well, now you're being dumb." Alex cupped her face and kissed her slowly, like a caress of the lips, and ran her fingers down her hair. "Come on, let's do some tourist stuff."

They exited the bar, with Alex surrounding her shoulders and Piper circling the woman's waist. Inevitably, she felt relief, while still needing some reassurance, but the brunette was busily chattering about architecture, about going for a walk in some park, about buying souvenirs.

"Buying souvenirs? You?" Piper asked, eyeing the brunette suspiciously.

"Yeah, chocolate, for my mom. I promised her."

Nodding slowly, Piper thought about how Alex phoned her mom regularly, or managed to send her a postcard, no matter where they were. She had heard her through the phone, commanding Alex to take care, chastising her for being away for too long, telling her that she would like to see her more often. It made Piper consider her own relationship with her family and Polly, the person she still had the audacity to call her best friend. She was estranged from them; she couldn't keep up with her own stuff, let alone with theirs, and she wouldn't be buying them souvenirs anytime soon.

"Hey, Pipes, you know what Brussels is renowned for?"

"Beer and chocolate?"

"Yeah. And?"

"I don't know. Peeing infants?"

The dark-haired woman chuckled huskily and tightened her embrace, awakening Piper's body, making her consider returning to the hotel, souvenir-buying be damned.

"Velvet and lace," Alex said, slowly pronouncing the words and smiling cheekily. "Wanna go shopping? And let's get some chocolate for ourselves too."


	10. What's With The Face

Several minutes after the takeoff, she had dozed off, and at some point, she had woken up with her head resting on Alex's shoulder, a whisking strand of hair tickling her forehead. She kept completely still, with her eyes shut, to relish on the familiar warmth emanating from the other woman's skin, and her alluring scent. Since everything else was an ever-changing merry-go-round, this was what her senses automatically recognized as home now, so she tried to hold onto it for as long as her fidgety mind allowed her.

Through half-closed eyelids, Piper identified the pulled-down tray table, the cold drinks hazing up the plastic cups, the assortment of newspapers and magazines, and Alex's legs crossed one over the other, the book she'd bought at the airport balanced on her knee.

Gently, the brunette reached out around her and pulled her closer. She pressed her lips against Piper's head while her hand travelled down Piper's back, finding the patch of skin between her sweater and her jeans. The caress then snaked under her sweater and moved upwards, until Alex's cool fingers reached the back of her bra and slid under it. Piper breathed out, her eyes closing instinctively, and let the woman touch her in that slow, careful way. While once it would have seemed unbelievable to miss Alex -considering the fact that they had hardly been apart during the span of their relationship-, the brunette had been so terribly busy lately that all they appeared to be doing was sharing different hotel rooms. Not that they were roomies exactly, since sometimes Piper was able to tear Alex away from the computer or the phone, and other times Alex did her best to appease her. However, none of those actions had taken them much further than the bed, and every time that Piper managed to convince Alex to move, it didn't really feel like a success. On the contrary, it left her with a curious sensation of defeat, and perhaps it was because she believed that being with her girlfriend shouldn't have to be a battle. It had to be a given, like it had been before.

Furthermore, Piper felt such relief every time she managed to get Alex back that it almost terrified her as much as not achieving it, because it only proved how much she depended on that one person. She knew that she couldn't keep operating under relief, because relief wasn't a pure emotion - it was born out of other emotions bargaining amongst themselves. Although it felt good momentarily, it was actually corrosive on the long run. And, as used as she was to negotiating with herself and adapting her own nature to whatever was coming, Piper didn't favor doing that with Alex, since Alex had been the only one who had managed to bring out her unadulterated emotions. All that pretending that Alex's job didn't exist -or that it was like any office job-, pretending that she wasn't implicated in it, pretending that she wasn't scared, pretending that nothing had changed… it was slowly eroding her, since she just wasn't capable of filtering everything out.

Her situation was like a wave, and she was just a random rock awash on the shore; however, instead of softening her into a smooth, round pebble, this wave seemed to be carving into her, making her spiky and full of angles and tiny holes. She felt on edge too, more often than not, and occasionally didn't like the version of herself that she was seeing.

Sometimes she felt small and lost, or like she was fading, perhaps as a consequence of the old, majestic cities they were traveling to, together with Alex's intermittent presence. She remembered when Alex had told her about the trip she was to take to Brussels, how she had instructed her to conveniently "lose" her passport, and how strange, and eerie, and creepy it had all been. It had felt as if she had lost a big chunk of her past - a part of her life gone, erased voluntarily, for Alex. It was getting increasingly harder to not think about that.

Piper raised her head to look at the brunette, her eyes unexpectedly colliding against Alex's blue orbs.

"What's with the face?"

Snapping out of it, Piper blinked a couple of times and shook her head. She'd thought that Alex hadn't noticed that she was awake, and didn't know which one of her passing thoughts had seeped through and altered her features. Alex was looking at her intently, her raised eyebrows like a pair of question marks turned sideways.

"I missed this," she answered, jerking her head at Alex's hand, invisible under her sweater.

The brunette flashed the sweetest of smiles at her and bent down to kiss her, rubbing their noses together. Piper welcomed those lips like water in the desert, but didn't externalize her desperation, since she didn't want this to be about sex. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but this was the kind of contact she had been really missing, and right now she needed Alex to fix her like this. She needed Alex to be present and her touch to convince her mind that everything was okay.

Of course, Piper realized that she was bargaining again, because she couldn't really trick herself, could she? But she could attempt to do the next best thing, which was to turn down the volume almost completely, and this was the way of achieving it. She draped her arm around Alex's waist, her thumb getting under her shirt and caressing her hipbone.

With a quick movement of her wrist, Alex flipped away the novel she had been reading and then pulled off her glasses to place them on top of her head.

"It was a crappy story anyway," the dark-haired woman said, grinning goofily and using her now-free arm to hug her tighter.

Piper buried her face in the warmth of Alex's neck, acknowledging that she felt much better now. It almost took her by surprise, her own capacity for believing, greatly helped by the fact that she _wanted_ to believe. And who wouldn't want to believe, when they were together and they were traveling to an enchanting place?

As the pilot started chattering about the weather, they both turned to look out the small rounded rectangle that was the window. Through the thick pane, Piper saw that the clouds were dense and wavy, forming an extensive surface which looked like someone had just unrolled a thick, white carpet in the middle of the sky for the plane to travel. The clouds seemed solid, making Piper doubt the pilot's words about there being rain underneath them. With their cheeks pressed together and their arms around each other, they kept watching as the plane highlighted the clouds with its shadow.


	11. Tiptoeing

Putting things off in her line of work was a bit like looking for trouble, since everything needed to function with the accuracy of a Swiss watch, and even when it did, things could and did go wrong sometimes. However, not indulging in the pleasures that the city had to offer was an unforgivable crime. A much bigger crime, it seemed, was to let her girlfriend wander the streets of Paris by herself, so she had secretly booked a pair of tickets for the Palais Garnier, not even caring to find out for which show, because the main thing was to satisfy Piper's curiosity to see the inside of the opera house, with its impressive staircase and ultra-famous chandelier.

Wearing a light-blue dress and looking absolutely stunning, the blonde was making her laugh with all her gawking and open-mouthed amazement. Alex knew that this wasn't the fucking New Year's Concert in Vienna and that they were slightly overdressed for the occasion, but who the fuck cared, when Piper was apparently enjoying every second of it? Alex was awfully aware that lately she had been too absorbed by work to do a lot of couple stuff, and could often perceive a shade of disappointment in Piper's eyes - not that she could do much about it; for all her riches, the one thing she definitely couldn't purchase was time. And yet she always managed to fix things. She was balancing both aspects of her life more or less successfully, intermixed as they now were, and at the moment felt pretty good about it.

The performance they were apparently going to see had been inspired by Degas's renowned paintings and sculpture, which Alex could certainly appreciate, but ballet itself… not so much. Piper, for her part, seemed too starry-eyed to even mind what the show was about; it was all shiny and golden and wow-worthy to her, and couldn't stop pointing at all the little things she noticed in the burgundy and gold interior, while Alex found herself wishing that the six-ton chandelier hanging above them would crash down on the audience. Not being one to settle for boredom, her mind instantly found something else to focus on. She calmly pretended to watch the ballet as her fingers tiptoed their way up Piper's thigh, and was unable to suppress a grin when she saw Piper's reaction out of the corner of her eye. The blonde, who in fact looked very cute when she was alarmed, jerked her head towards Alex, eyebrows raised and eyes wide open.

"Alex," Piper hissed, glancing around not very subtly. "Alex, what are you doing?"

"What? I'm not doing anything," she whispered back as innocently as she could. "Now hush, I'm trying to understand what's going on."

Her hand circled the inside of Piper's thigh and applied the intermittent pressure she knew would work on the woman. The blonde slid lower on the velvet seat and proceeded to fold her white shawl into a neat, rather large rectangle, which she inconspicuously placed over her lap. Taking this as an obvious signal to continue, Alex moved her hand upwards still, until her pinky and ring fingers grazed the fabric of Piper's underwear. The slight contact was enough to make the blonde buck her hips and slide even lower, a response which Alex acknowledged with pride.

She leaned towards the girl as if she was about to quietly make some comment about the performance, but instead took Piper's earlobe between her teeth and released it very slowly, topping it off with a wet kiss. Alex then fixed her eyes straight ahead while her fingers pushed their way under Piper's panties, since she did not need to look at the woman to know her way around her or to identify the natural reactions of her body while she stroked her (although seeing her was always a plus). What she did need to do, however, was press her lips together to keep herself from chuckling devilishly at Piper's efforts to keep both still and quiet in the semi-darkness of the packed theater flooded by classical music.

The brunette felt empowered by the knowledge that Piper was absolutely hers, that the girl was losing her sense of self -retaining just enough to keep her moans at bay- and had become a slave to her touch, that all she could do was focus on the flickering and spiraling movements of her fingertips. Additionally, Alex felt immensely happy, as she always was when she made Piper feel good. She had felt that particular kind of joy from day one -or rather, night one-, and had ardently pursued it throughout the span of their relationship. Moreover, she even found space in her mind to think about how both sensations often came together for her -the sense of power and the feeling of happiness-, how they were entwined, forming part of the same rush.

It was in her nature to know that Piper was at the point of no return now, and Alex was the one who could give her everything or nothing at all, depending on whether she kept on stroking her or stopped. But she did, she pressed on, and treated herself with a quick glance towards the blonde, who was biting her lower lip and clutching the protective shawl.

Her fingers lingered between Piper's legs to garner a few extra enticing shivers from the girl, and then Alex discreetly retrieved her hand, like nothing had happened.

"Je suis désolée," Alex hurriedly whispered to the middle-aged woman sitting at the other side of Piper, who had turned to frown at the blonde, perhaps because she had seen her tottering suspiciously. "Ballet just gets her too excited. We're such big fans."

Piper glared at her menacingly, with her eyes perfectly spelling out the words "I'm going to kill you," and it became impossible for Alex not to make a face, for all she could see was how flustered the girl was, with her cheeks as red as the seats. Feeling very proud of herself, she returned her attention towards the stage -a provocation in itself-, but also started sucking on her moist fingertips, which she suspected would drive the blonde insane. She was right in believing that, since Piper stood up as soon as the lights of the theater went on, so fast that Alex was tempted to ask her if there was a spring on her butt.

They hurried towards the exit, arm in arm and trying to act composed, when they ran into the theater employee who was at the door. He was so confused when they managed to make him understand that they wanted to leave that he tried to use his limited English to explain that the show wasn't over yet, which of course they already knew. He then tried to convince them to stay, which made Piper lose her patience and give that poor guy a taste of her temper, commanding him to move away from the goddamn door.

With the pattering raindrops falling over them, they skipped down the steps that led to the theater entrance and hailed a cab, because there was no time to spare. The swerving vehicle was like a miniature roller coaster, with Piper kissing her and half-crawling on top of her, which caused the driver to yell at them some French equivalent of "No hanky-panky in my taxi" - no translation required. Chuckling, Alex grasped the girl's hand to try to calm her and prevent her from answering back, since it would definitely be no fun to be dropped in the middle of the street.

They arrived to their apartment building, and Alex wasted no time in embracing the blonde in the elevator, her fingers digging into the skin of Piper's mostly naked back. While kissing Piper's bare shoulder, she lifted her eyes to look at their reflection on the elevator mirror, which took up almost half the wall. It was kind of amazing how well their bodies fit together, the way Piper's head belonged in the crook of her neck, and how her curves always seemed to touch Alex in all the interesting places.

"Are you going to finish what you started earlier?" Piper asked as soon as they crossed the front door, her voice sultry against her ear.

She rolled her eyes, pretending to think about it, but Piper's parted lips were now so close to her mouth that she couldn't help but dive into them, delighted to find Piper's eager tongue with her own. That was how they got to the main bedroom, Alex half-carrying the girl, stumbling blindly across the flat, which was still new enough for her not to know exactly where she was going. She dropped Piper on the bed and climbed on top of her, her hands starting to snake under the blue dress, discovering the even softer skin underneath.

Piper cupped her face and then carefully removed her glasses, a simple enough gesture, but still something she'd never done before. It was enough to make Alex stop what she was doing and look at girl. With no shortage of passion in their relationship, Alex was sometimes still amazed by how meaningful their quiet moments were for her. She enveloped Piper's lips with her own, caressing her hands down her sides as she pressed into the woman with her hips. No longer in such a rush, they slowly started rocking against each other without breaking the kiss. They let their bodies do all the work, with Alex interlacing their hands and holding them in place over Piper's head, and their hot centers rubbing against each other through their damp underwear. By waiting for each other they created a rhythm, which they gradually climbed together, until they couldn't put it off any longer and came at the same time, their mouths full of each other's moans and whimpers.

The blonde broke the kiss to place her scalding lips on Alex's ear. "I love you."

Releasing the girl's hands and surrounding her waist with her arms, the brunette made them roll on the bed so that Piper was now on top of her. Her fingers started tiptoeing up Piper's spine until they disappeared into the yellow mane, concluding the journey they had started earlier in the evening.

The phone started ringing just as she was about to respond to Piper's proclamation, making the blonde woman groan in annoyance. But hey, it wasn't like she _wanted_ to receive those urgent phone calls at all hours; of course she would rather romp in bed and compose her own working schedule like before. It wasn't her fault if it was rather hectic out there and she couldn't simply control when they needed her.

Since Piper appeared to be in no mood to collaborate and wasn't moving a muscle, Alex had to roll them on the bed once more so that she ended up on top and could detach herself from the girl's grip. Hurriedly, she got up and snatched the phone from the desk.

"Yeah."

While the voice at the other side of the line gave her instructions, she glanced at the blonde, who was still lying on the bed, motionless, albeit with a somewhat serious expression, as if she was waiting for something. However, Piper reacted immediately the second Alex hung up and turned on her laptop. The girl sprung from the bed, huffing in frustration, and proceeded to take off her dress and put on more comfortable clothes.

"Babe, could you get me something else to wear too?" asked the brunette, trying to pay no attention to Piper's little display of anger.

"Sure," the blonde answered, perhaps too loudly, and unnecessarily opening and closing every drawer in the dresser. "Are you going to be busy all night again?"

They were standing on opposite sides of the white bed, with Piper at its foot, wearing some adorable checkered pajamas, and Alex standing by the headboard, just in her underwear. In another context, that premise could have been the start of something good, especially because the blonde looked so damn adorable in those pajamas - Alex had grown unaccustomed to seeing her with any kind of nightly wear. She caught the small bundle of clothes that Piper tossed at her and put them on, shrugging at the girl's question.

"Well, Pipes, it is what it is, you know? It's a bit of a rough patch, but there'll be more time."

"Yeah…" the girl breathed out, rather than pronounced the word, and walked out of the bedroom.

The brunette threw her head back and sighed, feeling a pang of worry in the mouth of her stomach, but relaxed upon hearing the very distinguishable rattle of dishes and silverware. Following the sound just to make sure, Alex grinned when she peeked through the kitchen doorway and saw that Piper was trying to cook something - the key word being "trying". Both housework and handiwork were not among the blonde's strong suits. To confirm that, she only needed to remember the corpse of their toaster back home, which Piper had intended to repair with a fucking hot glue gun, and Alex had found it so fucking hilarious that she didn't have it in her to throw away the deceased machine.

It had been an excellent idea to rent an apartment this time, and now she was even more convinced. The fact that it was someone's home and not a hotel gave Piper some sense of domesticity, like it was _their _home. It appeared to keep her somewhat rooted, not drifting around like in other parts of Europe, a matter which hadn't been helped by Alex's own absence. No, the gorgeous flat in the very nice neighborhood was doing wonders for the girl, and so Alex found the relief that she needed to return to the bedroom and get to work.


	12. Partners In Crime

As the sky darkened, everything in the room became wrapped in long shadows, as if an explosion of black streamers had mysteriously occurred. It was the only indication she had of the passing time. Slumped on the sofa, with her bent legs against her chest, Piper spotted Alex dashing through the corridor, seeing her as a sudden flash of black of blue. From the little sounds she was making, Piper inferred that the woman was in the kitchen and was opening and closing the refrigerator, and then there was the unmistakable pop of a cork being unscrewed. Several seconds later, the woman reappeared, holding a champagne bottle by its neck.

The brunette hadn't yet stopped opening bottle after bottle, very efficiently consuming the great quantity of champagne she had stashed in the fridge on the day of their arrival, perhaps believing that they would have lots to celebrate in the so-called City of Love. Even the very resilient Alex had to be inebriated by now, and yet she kept retiring back to her desk and her phone after every visit to the kitchen. The brunette never paused at the doorway, and once more Piper didn't call out for her, since there was nothing to say. It had all been said already, it seemed, and the bedroom had become Alex's fortress, while Piper had claimed the living room as hers, making the corridor, kitchen, and bathroom neutral ground.

At the beginning of their stay, Piper had swallowed her anger and gone out to explore the city, rummaging the little shops and discovering cozy cafés where you could borrow books and read for hours. It had been amazing, but painful too, since those were the kind of things they would've done together, as in the infant stages of their relationship, back at the States, when she hadn't been sure of what they were or what they'd been doing. That recollection had made her miss Alex's presence all the more, really, because the feeling of uncertainty was there as well, but her previous, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, unthinking attitude was now apparently dead. The remaining sensation was one of vertigo before an abrupt cliff.

Because she was scared. _Now _she was scared - that was the biggest difference of all. This was not happening merely because Alex was perpetually busy and stressed, her responses now usually short and painfully sharp, but also because Piper felt that she had been losing herself by trading in her irritation and her worry for dinner dates with Alex, short walks around Montmartre or quick shopping trips to the Champs-Élysées. She couldn't help but believe that Alex had been using her own affection -and particularly her attention-, as currency in exchange for Piper's compliance. This had been a constant all through their trip around Europe, and in accepting those unspoken conditions she was only damaging herself. However, more than anything, this was because, even though she had always known that Alex's activities were all but legal, she had always felt safe, with the absolute surrender that comes with complete trust. She had placed her life between the brunette's very dexterous hands, knowing that this was a person who imported heroine for a living, but she wouldn't have joined her, gallivanting all across the globe, if she hadn't trusted her. Alex didn't even use to have to touch her to transmit that sense of security, like an invisible bubble surrounding her at all times. She had trusted Alex with her life, but all that, Piper mused, was now irrecoverable. She had stopped feeling safe with her.

One had to wonder, really, if said bubble was one of protection or deceit. The truth was that, for some time now, she had distrusted that permanent sense of walking on air, that lather of unreality covering their relationship. So much building over nothing, so laboriously, creating all those castles in the clouds… Or was it that she had once again started to see a yet undetermined but existent expiration date hanging over their heads? They'd never stopped moving, never stopped travelling, still very much together, but they'd just been biding their time, hadn't they? The explosion had just happened to occur in Paris.

Disappointment was a very powerful thing. It bit off a fragment of one's heart and then returned it, rotten, to its place. It wasn't that bad when it was only a one-time thing, because it would only bother you once in a while (and what was a tiny pang of worry among a million fantastic things?), but then one day you'd feel another bite, and another section of your heart would become tainted. Piper pictured her own feelings like a stretched out paperclip, how it could never be returned to its previous, perfect shape and became a deformed imitation of what it used to be. One could try to put it back in the box, but it would still stand out like a sore thumb because one could never unsee it ugliness. Shaking the box to bury it under all the others wouldn't work either, because one still knew that it was there.

"I can't be with you," she had told Alex, after her already fragile hope had been shattered into a million pieces by Alex's request, especially because she had formulated it in such a way that had led Piper to believe that they were going to Istanbul together. Up until that moment, she had allowed herself to hope, but not anymore. Now she knew that she could no longer be with Alex, but still remained in that rented apartment. Perhaps she couldn't let go that easily of what had been the only constant in her life for such a long time (not so much lately), and wasn't prepared to feel even more lost than she already felt. And so she stayed motionless as an ice sculpture, keeping track of the woman's comings and goings and listening to her muffled voice of the phone, feeling stuck.

Piper hugged one of the sofa's cushions and once more glanced towards the doorway. She was startled to find Alex there, leaning against it like it was the most natural thing in the world, with a bottle under her arm and her feet bare. Since the woman's face, along with everything else, was draped in darkness, her expression was thus unreadable, and so Piper didn't say a thing.

"Hey. Wanna talk?" Alex finally asked, breaking the very long silence with her deep voice.

"About what?"

"Oh, you know… Us?"

"There is no 'us'." It felt like there hadn't been an "us" for some time, only the stubborn hope that there was, until Alex had gone and shot it in the face.

"You're still here," said the brunette, matter-of-factly.

Believing to have detected a flash of a smile, Piper quickly sat up, an action which the woman apparently took as an authorization to enter the living room. She padded towards her, stepping into the single beam of light, which came from the lamppost outside, filtered through the space between the curtains, and her face became alight with a golden glow. With her hair neatly tucked behind her ears, her forehead clear, and not wearing any glasses, Alex's features appeared softer, like there was nothing troubling her. Then, with the next step, she went back to being covered in shadows.

The silhouette finally crouched before her, setting the large, half-empty bottle on the coffee table. "Want some?"

Piper shook her head. "I don't feel like it."

"Why not? It might get you in the mood to finish our conversation."

"There's nothing to finish. It is finished."

"Yeah?" Alex grabbed the bottle and took a swig from it. "'Cause it really looked like you just turned around and fucking bailed."

Remembering the argument they'd had in the bedroom, Piper recalled that it was the first time she had ever welcomed Alex's habit of not being a pursuer; she'd felt relieved, because she'd needed to think and sort herself out. But now the brunette had indeed come to her, with the night.

Alex slowly raised her hand, stroked Piper's wrist, and then seized one of the corners of the cushion that the blonde was still hugging. She gave it a gentle tug, trying to make Piper let go of it, but the blonde refused to relinquish her protection.

"Alright, be like that." Alex sighed and kept silent for several seconds. "Why are you doing this?"

"I told you, this is not on me. _You're_ doing this. But I guess it's all fine just as long as I don't open my mouth and agree with everything, isn't it?"

"My God, Piper, enough with the drama! You know I only asked because I really needed your help, and you straight up refused."

Going back to their previous argument once more, she remembered how sad Alex had looked after the initial outburst. She recalled her words "I thought we were a team," and felt an identical twinge of pain in her chest, which didn't mean that Alex's request had been fair. Just the memory of the trip to Brussels and what happened at the airport paralyzed her still, and knew she wouldn't be capable of doing anything remotely similar to that again and, most importantly, she didn't want to.

It seemed to her that they'd been on a different page for some time now, and Alex had talked to her like they were partners in crime, while all that Piper had been doing during their time together was gleefully ignoring the insignificant detail of where the money and everything else came from. What Alex hadn't understood was that participating in a money withdrawal in Bali or the transportation of that suitcase to Brussels didn't imply that she was part of the "team". She'd done the polite equivalent of covering her ears and singing "la la la" really loudly whenever the brunette wanted to disclose something about her work or simply comment on whatever she was doing. Perhaps she hadn't been clear enough, and that was her fault.

Undoubtedly, part of it was Alex's fault as well, for hearing her but not being able to really listen, or being unable to realize the implications of what she was doing, that she was a criminal, that she wasn't absorbed by any common office job. And Piper, who had felt somewhat like a stupid trophy wife, hadn't wished to be just that, but she also hadn't wanted to implicate herself more in Alex's business more than she already had. In short, she'd felt stuck for a long time, and now there was nothing left to do.

"Of course I refused! And you weren't asking; you implied that it was something I _had_ to do, completely disregarding that I didn't want to do it."

"And you're disregarding that you'd be doing something for the both of us."

"I told you I wasn't your fucking mule."

"I love your bullshit rationales, they're so hilarious! How many times have I asked? You'd be the most expensive, most useless drug mule ever!"

"That's not the point."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Alex sat on the sofa very theatrically. "Please, Pipes, do tell. What is the fucking point?"

"The point is that you are a drug dealer and there's nothing that's not wrong with that."

"Funny, and here I was thinking that the point is that you're a selfish asshole. You've been happy to ignore that for years, you _are_ aware of that, right?"

"And I can't do it anymore."

"Not because it's wrong, mind you. It's because you're scared."

It occurred to her that the brunette appeared to be more interested in assigning blame -or rather, shifting it so that it pointed towards her- than finishing that horrid conversation from before. It was easier for Alex to throw shit at her face or simplify the facts by believing that either she was straight or she never really loved her enough to help her. Or maybe that was just Alex's way; it certainly wasn't the first time she'd tried saying all kinds of outrageous stuff just to get her talking or to get a reaction out of her - any kind of reaction seemed to satisfy her.

"Yes, I am! I am scared, okay? Are you happy now?"

She tossed the cushion at Alex, who caught it with her right hand quite easily and set it aside. Then, Piper tried to stand up, but the brunette snatched her by the wrist and pulled her back down. She lowered her eyes when she felt Alex's hand drawing spirals on the underside of her wrist, and wanted to swat that hand away, and knew that she probably should. Instead, she allowed it to move up her arm, close around her shoulder, and pull her into an embrace.

The brunette then ventured to press her lips against her neck, delivering tiny kisses to her skin until they reached behind her ear. Piper murmured Alex's name and turned her head to avoid those kisses, but ended up making matters worse because her lips were now closer to Alex's. During those last months, she had tried time and again to call the woman's attention, to communicate to her somehow that she was there, until she'd ran out of patience and believed she had nothing more to give. Finally, she had sat on that sofa like an empty shell, and now Alex was there beside her, the Alex who perhaps was still blind and still believed.

It had always been tough for her to resist the dark-haired woman, who was now expertly moving in the shadows like a black liquid. This reminded Piper of how they used to find each other in the darkness of the bedroom, in the middle of the night, and how the fact that they knew each other's bodies so well never diminished that sudden hunger. But she was sure that those were not precisely the most appropriate thoughts.

"Stop it," she whispered, involuntarily making their lips graze.

"Is that what you want?" the brunette asked, the mockery in her voice completely audible.

Alex crossed the millimetric distance and kissed her, tentatively at first, then possessively, making Piper sit on her lap. And Piper found that this was akin to trying to break a long-acquired habit: it was easier to indulge in it than to refrain, and the body recognizes what it wants, feeling relief when they are reunited.

She surrounded Alex's shoulders, letting the woman's hands snake under her shirt and caress up and down her back. Piper then slid one leg under one of Alex's so that they were straddling each other, and the woman's hands immediately moved to her ass, pressing their hips together. The sensation left her breathless for a second and she gasped into Alex's mouth. But it wasn't enough, and Alex seemed to understand, as her fingers reached under her ass and teasingly raked between her legs. The discontinuous contact drove her crazy, and for an eternal moment Piper forgot about everything that was troubling her, what she wanted to do and what she had to do. She buried all of it under the sounds that she and Alex were making, and that sofa could be anywhere in the world, which meant that they could be sharing it during any moment in time, during the span of their relationship; it could've been the sofa in Alex's loft, or the one at the Seychelles. And it didn't even need to be a sofa, really; it could've been their bed -Alex's bed- too, or even a dingy sleeping bag, who could tell now?

Their mouths crashed together and, as the final shocks of pleasure subsided, their kisses simmered down. Piper grabbed a handful of Alex's raven hair and dared to look into her eyes, finding everything she didn't want to see, because it was all coming back to her now, and she knew that her stand remained the same, while Alex already appeared to be teasing her into having another go. It seemed like their timing was stubbornly off, and there was no longer any way of repairing it, nor any reason to try, and that other distance between them **-**the one that wasn't physical**- **still existed. What she believed Alex couldn't understand was that this wasn't under her control like everything else, that this she wouldn't be able to fix. This wasn't a story they would laugh about one day. This was the end.

Staring at their interlocked fingers, Piper acknowledged that the fact that she was feeling lost wasn't entirely Alex's fault, but the responsibility to solve the problem was indeed hers. She believed that it was each person's duty to know oneself, and she wouldn't achieve that by staying, because that implied drifting and floating forever… only not forever, because she was now aware of the risk, and believed that Alex would have no qualms about putting her in the center of that risk again. And what scared her even more was what she thought would be Alex's reaction whenever that danger decided to present itself.

Her mind rewound back, several years back - objectively, not a whole lot of time, but their time together had felt so loaded with intricate, tiny details, such a tapestry of moments that it felt as if it had lasted a lifetime. However, her very efficient mind paused at token memories, singling them out of that rich context, and then stringing them together. She hadn't made much of them then, apart from some momentary anger, but for instance, she recalled the importance Alex had given to the waterfall incident, having let Piper leap into the thundering waters by herself. She thought about that feeling she had of standing before a cliff. How it had thrilled her before, but only because she'd been like a baby, enjoying everything without knowing the meaning of fear, in the knowledge that Alex would always be there to hold her. She had been stupid like that. But now her eyes were open, she was aware of the real state of things, and knew that in reality she was standing before that hole in the ground with her arms stretched and completely unprotected. Now she understood that Alex was programmed in such a way that she wouldn't crash with her, if Piper was ever to fall, because Alex's own safety would always come first.

And so should Piper's. She knew that her consent as a willing prey was over.


End file.
